GIFT  OF 
Dr.   Horace   Ivie 


LITERATURE  PRIMER,  .^^.^ 

by  John  Richard  Green,  M.  A. 
ENGLISH. 


Digitized  by  tine  Internet  Archive 

in  2007  with  funding  from 

IVIicrosoft  Corporation 


http://www.archive.org/details/brookeliterObroorich 


Edited  by  JOHN  RiCHARD  Green,  M.A. 

ENGLISH 

LITERATURE. 


REV.  STOPFORD,  BROOKE,  M.A 


NEW   EDITION,    RE^lS^D  7iKD   GCRRECTEIX 


WITH  AN  APPENDIX  ON  AMERICAN  LITER  A  TURE, 

By  J.  HARRIS  PATTON,  M.  A.,  Ph.D., 

AUTHOR   OF    "  FOUR   HUNDRED    YEARS   OF   AMERICAN    HISTORY,'' 

"natural   RESOURCES   OF   THE   UNITED   STATES," 

"political   economy   FOR   AMERICAN    YOUTH,"    ETC. 


NEW  YORK  •:.  CINCINNATI  •:•  CHICAGO 

AMERICAN    BOOK    COMPANY. 


Copyright,  1879, 
By  D.  APPLETON  AND  GOMPANV. 

Copyright,  1882, 
By  D.  APPLETON  AND  COMPANY, 

CoPYitlGHT,    1894,    BY 

'    AMEPICAN\B06k  COMPANY. 
W.  P.  4 

6DUCAT!ON  DEPT 


GIFT  OF 


CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER  I. 

PAGE 

WRITERS  BEFORE  THE  NORMAN  CONQUEST,  67O 

1066 5 

CHAPTER    II. 
FROM     THE    CONQUEST    TO     CHAUCER*  S     DEATH, 

1066 — 1400 22 

CHAPTER  III. 

FROM    CHAUCER,     I40O,    TO    ELIZABETH,    1 5 59      .         50 

CHAPTER  IV. 

FROM    1559    TO    1603 71 

CHAPTER  V. 
FROM  Elizabeth's  death  to  the  restoration, 
1603 — 1660 108 

CHAPTER  VI. 
from    the    restoration    to   the  death  of 
POPE  and  swift,  i66q — 1745 125 

CHAPTER  VII. 

prose  literature  from  death  OF  POPE 
and  swift  to  THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION, 
AND   FROM  THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION  TO 

-   DEATH  OF  SCOTT,  1 745 — 1 83 2 I45 

924166 


4  CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER   VIII. 

PAGE 

POETRY,   FROM    1730-1832 1 58 

CHAPTER    IX. 
AMERICAN   LITERATURE,   FROM    1647— 1895  .      .      .      186 

CHAPTER   X. 

AMERICAN       LITERATURE       (CONTINUED),      FROM 

1647— 1895 208 


PRIMEIt;  ;       '■''" 
ENGLISH   LITERATURE. 

CHAPTER  I. 

WRITERS  BEFORE  THE  NORMAN  CONQUEST,  670 — 1066. 

1 .  Continental  Poems.  —  TAe  Traveller's  Song. — Dear's  Complaint, 

The  Fight  at  Finnesburg, — Beowulf^  before  600. 

2.  Poems  in  England. — (Z^Amiov^^  Paraphrase,  670. — Judith, — 

Cynewulf  s  Poems,  and  others  in  Exeter  and  Vercelli  books. 
—  Odes  in  A.  S.  Chronicle. — Song  of  Brunanburh,  937. 
—Fight  at  Maldon,  991, 

3.  Prose. — Baeda's    translation    of    St,    John,  735- — King 

yElfred's  work  dm-ing  his  two  times  of  peace,  880  —893  and 
897— 901.— ^Ifric's  prose  works,  990— 995.— Wulfstan's 
work,  1002— 1023'— The  FnglisA  Chronicle,  ends  1154. 

I.  The  History  of  English  Literature  is  the 

story  of  what  great  English  men  and  women  thought 
and  felt,  and  then  wrote  down  in  good  prose  and 
beautiful  poetry  in  the  English  language.  The  story- 
is  a  long  one.  It  begins  in  England  about  the  year 
670,  it  begins  still  earlier  on  the  Continent,  in  the  old 
Angle- Land,  and  it  is  still  going  on  in  the  year  1879. 
Into  this  little  book  then  is  to  be  put  the  stoiy  of 
more  than  1,200  years  of  the  thoughts,  feelings,  and 
imagination  of  a  great  people.  Every  English  man 
and  woman  has  good  reason  to  be  proud  of  the  work 
done  by  their  forefathers  in  prose  and  poetry.     Every 


6  ENGLISH  LITERATURE.  [chap. 

one  who  can  write  a  good  book  or  a  good  song  may 
say  to  himself,  '  *  I  belong  to  a  noble  company,  which 
has  been  teaching  and  delighting  the  world  for  more 
than  i,ooo  years."  And  that  is  a  fact  in  which 
those  who  write  and  those  who  read  English  literature 
ought  to  feel  d.  nc^blerpiide. 

2.  Ihe  English  an(J  the  Welsh. — This  litera- 
ture- M-  w^iuen  ;in  English,  the  tongue  of  our  fathers. 
They  lived,  while  this  island  of  ours  was  still  called 
Britain,  in  Sleswick,  Jutland,  and  Holstein  ;  but,  either 
because  they  were  pressed  from  the  inland,  or  for 
pure  love  of  adventure,  they  took  to  the  sea,  and, 
landing  at  various  parts  of  Britain  at  various  times, 
drove  back,  after  150  years  of  hard  fighting,  the 
Britons,  whom  they  called  Welsh,  to  the  land  now 
called  Wales,  and  to  Cornwall.  It  is  well  for  those 
who  study  English  literature  to  remember  that  in 
these  two  places  the  Britons  remained  as  a  distinct 
race  with  a  distinct  literature  of  their  own,  because 
the  stories  and  the  poetry  of  the  Britons  crept  after- 
wards into  English  literature  and  had  a  great  influence 
upon  it.  The  whole  tale  of  King  Arthur,  of  which 
English  poetry  and  even  English  prose  is  so  full,  was 
a  British  tale.  The  imaginative  work  of  the  conquered 
afterwards  took  captive  their  fierce  conquerors. 

3.  The  Englisti  Tongue. — Of  the  language 
in  which  our  literature  is  written  we  can  say  little 
here ;  it  is  fully  discussed  in  the  Primer  of  English 
Grammar.  Of  course  it  has  changed  its  look  very 
much  since  it  began  to  be  written.  The  earliest  form 
of  our  English  tongue  is  very  different  from  modern 
English  in  form,  pronunciation,  and  appearance,  and 
one  must  learn  it  almost  as  if  it  were  a  foreign  tongue ; 
but  still  the  language  written  in  the  year  700  is  the 
same  as  that  in  which  the  prose  of  the  Bible  is  written, 
just  as  much  as  the  tree  planted  a  hundred  years  ago 
is  the  same  tree  to-day.  It  is  this  sameness  of  lan- 
guage, as   well  as  the   sameness   of  national  spirit, 


I.]        EARLY  WRITERS  TO  THE  CONQUEST  7 

which  makes  our  literature  one  literature  for  1,200 
years. 

4.  Old  English  Poetry  was  also  different  in 
form  from  what  it  is  now.  It  was  not  written  in  rime, 
nor  were  its  syllables  counted.  Its  essential  elements 
were  accent  and  aUiteration.^  Every  long  verse  is 
divided  into  two  half  verses  by  a  pause,  and  has  four 
I  accented  syllables,  while  the  number  of  unaccented 
syllables  is  indifferent.  These  half  verses  are  linked 
together  by  alliteration.  Two  accented  syllables  in 
the  first  half,  and  one  in  the  second,  begin  with  vowels 
(generally  different  vowels)  or  with  the  same  con- 
sonant.    Here  is  one  example  from  a  war  song  : — 

"  ^igu  tt/intrum  geong  I       ^ordum  maelde. 

Warrior  of  winters  young      |      With  words  spake." 

There  is  often  only  one  alliterative  letter  in  the  first 
half  verse.  Sometimes  there  are  more  accents  than 
four,  but  for  the  most  part  they  do  not  exceed  five 
in  an  ordinary  long  line.  Sometimes  in  subjects 
requiring  a  more  solemn  or  a  more  passionate  treat- 
ment a  metre  is  used  in  which  unaccented  syllables 
are  regularly  introduced,  and  the.  number  of  accented 
syllables  also  increased,  and  there  are  instances  in 
which  terminal  rimes  are  employed.  The  metres  are 
therefore  varied,  though  not  arbitrarily.  But  how- 
ever they  are  varied,  they  are  built  on  the  simple 
original  type  of  four  accents  and  three  alliterative 
syllables. 

The  emphasis  of  the  words  depends  on  the  thought. 
Archaic  forms  and  words  are  used,  and  metaphorical 
phrases  and  compound  words,  such  as  war-adder  for 
arrow,  or  the  whale' s-path  for  the  sea,  or  gold- friend 
of  men  for  king.  A  great  deal  of  parallelism,  such  as 
we  find  in  early  poetry,  prevails.  The  same  statement 
or  thought  is  repeated  twice  in  different  words.  **Then 

-  ^  See,  for  the  whole  of  this,  Mr.  Sweet's  An^lo-Saxon  Reader ^ 
p.  xcviii.     Clarendon  Press  Series. 


8  ENGLISH  LITER  A  TURE.  [chap. 

saw  they  the  sea  head  lands,  the  windy  walls."  The 
poetry  is  nevertheless  very  concise  and  direct.  Much 
more  attention  is  paid  to  the  goodness  of  the  matter 
than  to  the  form.  Things  are  said  in  the  shortest  way ; 
there  are  scarcely  any  similes,  and  the  metaphorical 
expressions  are  rare.  We  see  in  this  the  English 
character. 

After  the  Norman  conquest  there  gradually  crept  in 
a  French  system  of  rimes  and  of  metres  and  accent, 
which  we  find  full-grown  in  Chaucer's  works.  But 
unrimed  and  alliterative  verse  lasted  in  poetry  to  the 
reign  of  John,  was  revived  in  the  days  of  Edward  III. 
and  Richard  II.,  and  alliteration  was  blended  with  rime 
up  to  the  sixteenth  century.  The  latest  form  of  it  occurs 
in  Scotland. 

5.  The  First  English  Poems. — Our  fore- 
fathers, while  as  yet  they  were  heathen  and  lived  on 
the  Continent,  made  poems,  and  of  this  Co7itinental 
poetry  we  possess  a  few  remains.  The  earliest  per- 
haps is  the  Song  of  the  Traveller,  written,  it  seems 
likely,  in  the  fifth  century  by  a  man  who  had  lived  in 
the  fourth.  It  is  not  much  more  than  a  catalogue  of 
names  and  of  the  places  whither  the  minstrel  went 
with  the  Goths ;  but  where  he  expands,  he  shows  so 
pleasant  a  pride  in  his  profession,  that  he  wins  our 
sympathy.  Deor's  Complaint  is  another  of  these 
poems.  The  writer  is  a  bard  at  the  court  of  the 
Heodenings,  from  whom  his  foe  takes  by  craft  his 
goods.  He  writes  this  complaint  to  comfort  his 
heart.  "Weland  (the  great  smith  of  the  Eddas)  and 
the  kings  of  the  Goths  suffered  and  bore  their  weird, 
and  so  may  I.  The  All-wise  Lord  of  the  World  work- 
eth  many  changes.'*  This  is  the  general  argument, 
and  it  is  the  first  touch  of  the  sad  fatalism  which 
belongs  to  English  poetry.  The  Fight  at  Finnesburg 
is  the  third  fragment.  It  tells  of  the  attack  on  Fin's 
palace  in  Friesland,  and  the  whole  story  of  which  it 
is  a  part  is  alluded  to  in  Beowulf.     Of  all  the  Old 


I.]        EARLY  WRITERS  TO  THE  CONQUEST,  9 

English  battle  descriptions,  it  is  the  most  full  of  the 
fire  and  fierceness  of  war,  and  it  completes,  with  two 
fragments  of  the  epic  of  Waldhere,  and  with  Beowulf^ 
the  list  of  the  English  poetry  written  on  the  Con- 
tinent. 

6.  Beowulf  is  our  Old  English  epic,  and  it  recounts 
the  great  deeds  and  death  of  Beowulf.  It  may  have 
been  written  before  the  English  conquest  of  Britain,  in 
the  fifth  century.  The  scenery  is  laid  among  the  Goths 
of  Sweden  and  the  Danes,  and  there  is  no  mention  of 
our  England.  It  was  probably  wrought  into  an  epic 
out  of  short  poems  about  the  hero,  and  as  we  have  it, 
was  edited,  with  Christian  elements  introduced  into 
it,  by  a  Northumbrian  poet,  probably  in  the  eighth 
century. 

The  story  is  of  Hrothgar,  one  of  the  kingly  race  of 
Judand,  who  builds  his  hall,  Heorot,  near  the  sea, 
on  the  edge  of  the  moorland.  A  monster  called 
Grendel,  half-human,  half-fiend,  dwells  in  the  moor 
close  to  the  sea,  and  hating  the  festive  noise,  carries 
off  thirty  of  the  thanes  of  Hrothgar  and  devours  them. 
After  twelve  years  of  this  misery,  Beowulf,  thane  of 
Hygelac,  sails  from  Sweden  to  bring  help  to  Hrothgar, 
and  at  night,  when  Grendel  breaks  into  the  hall, 
wrestles  with  him,  and  tears  away  his  arm,  and  the 
fiend  flies  away  to  die.  His  mother  avenges  his  death 
the  next  night,  and  Beowulf  descends  into  her  sea- 
cave  and  slays  her  also,  and  then  returns  to  Hygelac. 
The  second  part  of  the  poem  opens  with  Beowulf  as 
king  in  his  own  land,  ruling  well,  until  a  fire-drake, 
who  guards  a  treasure,  is  robbed  and  comes  from  his 
den  to  harry  and  burn  the  country.  The  old  king 
goes  forth  then  to  fight  his  last  fight,  slays  the  dragon, 
but  dies  of  its  fiery  breath,  and  the  poem  closes  with 
the  tale  of  his  burial,  burned  on  a  lofty  pyre  on  the 
top  of  Hronesnses. 

Its  social  interest  lies  in  what  it  tells  us  of  the  man- 
mers  and  customs  of  our  forefathers  before  they  came 


lo  ENGLISH  LITERATURE,  [chap. 

to  England.  Their  mode  of  life  in  peace  and  war  is 
described;  their  ships,  their  towns,  the  scenery  in 
which  they  lived,  their  feasts,  amusements — we  have 
the  account  of  a  whole  day  from  morning  to  night — 
their  women  and  the  reverence  given  them,  the  way 
in  which  they  faced  death,  in  which  they  sang,  in 
which  they  gave  gifts  and  rewards.  And  the  whole  is 
told  with  Homeric  directness  and  simplicity.  A  deep 
fatalism  broods  over  it,  but  a  manly  spirit  fills  the 
fatahsm.  *' Sorrow  not,''  says  Beowulf  to  Hrothgar, 
**  it  is  better  for  every  man  to  avenge  his  friend  than 
to  mourn  greatly.  Each  of  us  must  abide  his  end. 
Let  him  wiio  can,  work  high  deeds  ere  he  die.  So, 
when  he  lies  lifeless,  it  will  be  best  for  the  warrior." 
Out  of  the  fatalism  naturally  grows  the  stern  and 
simple  pathos  of  the  poem.  It  is  most  poetical  in  the 
quick  force  with  which  the  story  is  realised  and  pic- 
tured, and  in  its  grave  truth  to  humanity.  The  descrip- 
tions of  the  sea  and  of  wild  nature  are  instinct  with  the 
same  spirit  which  fills  our  modern  poetry,  and  there 
still  lingers  among  us  that  nature  worship  of  our 
fathers  which  in  Beowulf  made  dreadful  and  lonely 
places  seem  dwelt  in — as  if  the  places  had  a  spirit — 
by  monstrous  beings.  In  the  creation  of  Grendel 
and  his  mother,  the  savage  stalkers  of  the  moor,  that 
half-natural,  half-supernatural  world  began,  which, 
when  men  grew  gentler  and  the  country  more  culti- 
vated, became  so  beautiful  as  fairyland.  Here  is  the 
description  of  the  dwelling-place  of  Grendel:  — 

**  Dark  is  the  land 
Where  they  dwell  :  windy  nesses,  and  holds  of  the  wolf: 
The  wild  path  of  the  fen  where  the  stream  of  the  wood 
Throu'^h  the  fog  of  the  sea-cliffs  falN  downward  in  flood. 
'Neath  the  earth  is  the  flood,  and  not  further  from  here 
Than  one  meles  out  a  mile,  is  the  :  arsh  of  the  moor, 
And  the  trees  o'er  it  waving  out  reach  and  hang  over ; 
And  root  last  is  the  wood  that  the  water  o'erhelms. 
There  the  v\  onder  is  great  that  one  shuddering  sees 
Every  night  in  the  flood  is  a  fire." 


I.]        EARLY  WRITERS  TO  THE  CONQUEST.         ii 

The  whole  poem,  Pagan  as  it  is,  is  English  to  its 
very  root.  It  is  sacred  to  us,  our  Genesis,  the  book 
of  our  origins. 

7.  Christianity  and  English  Poetry. — When 
we  came  to  Britain  we  were  great  warriors  and  great 
sea  pirates — "  sea  wolves,"  as  a  Roman  poet  calls  us  ; 
and  all  our  poetry  down  to  the  present  day  is  full  of 
war,  and  still  more  of  the  sea.  No  nation  has  ever 
written  so  much  sea-poetry.  But  we  were  more  than 
mere  warriors.  We  were  a  home-loving  people  when 
we  got  settled  either  in  Sleswick  or  in  England,  and 
all  our  literature  from  the  first  writings  to  the  last  is 
full  of  domestic  love,  the  dearness  of  home,  and  the 
ties  of  kinsfolk.  We  were  a  religious  people,  even  as 
heathen,  still  more  so  when  we  became  Christian,  and 
our  poetry  is  as  much  of  religion  as  of  war.  With 
Christianity  a  new  spirit  entered  into  English  poetry. 
The  war  spirit  did  not  decay,  but  into  the  songs  steals 
a  softer  element  The  fatalism  is  modified  by  the 
faith  that  the  fate  is  the  will  of  a  good  God.  The 
pathos  is  not  less,  but  it  is  relieved  by  an  onlook  of 
joy.  The  triumph  over  enemies  is  not  less  exulting, 
but  even  more,  for  it  is  the  triumph  of  God  over  His 
foes  that  is  sung  by  Caedmon  and  Cynewulf  Nor  is 
the  imaginative  delight  in  legends  and  in  the  super- 
natural less.  But  it  is  now  found  in  the  legends  of  the 
saints,  in  the  miracles  and  visions  that  Baeda  tells  of 
the  Christian  heroes,  in  fantastic  allegories  of  spiritual 
things,  like  the  poems  of  the  Phcenix  and  the  Whale, 
The  love  of  nature  lasted,  but  it  dwells  now  rather  on 
gentle  than  on  savage  scenery.  The  human  sorrow 
for  the  hardness  of  life  is  more  tender,  and  when  the 
poems  speak  of  the  love  of  home,  it  is  with  an  added 
grace.  One  little  bit  still  lives  for  us  out  of  the  older 
world.  "  Dear  is  the  welcome  guest  to  the  Frisian 
wife  when  the  vessel  strands ;  the  ship  is  come  and 
her  husband  to  his  house,  her  own  provider.  And  she 
welcomes  him   in,   washes  his   weedy  garment,  and. 


12  ENGLISH  LITERA  TURE,  [chap. 

clothes  him  anew.  It  is  pleasant  on  shore  to  him 
whom  his  love  awaits."  If  that  was  the  soft  note  of 
home  in  a  pagan  land,  it  was  softer  still  when  Christi- 
anity had  mellowed  manners.  Yet,  with  all  this,  the 
faith  of  Woden  still  influences  the  Christian  song. 
Christ,  is  not  only  the  Saviour,  but  the  Hero  who 
goes  forth  against  the  dragon.  His  overthrow  of 
the  fiends  is  described  in  much  the  same  terms  as 
that  of  Beowulf's  wrestling  with  Grendel.  *'  Bitterly 
grim,  gripped  them  in  his  wrath."  The  death  of 
Christ,  at  which  the  universe  trembles  and  weeps,  is 
like  the  death  of  Balder.  The  old  poetry  penetrated 
the  new,  but  the  spirit  of  the  new  transformed  that  of 
the  old. 

8.  Caedmon. — The  poem  of  Beowulf  has  the 
grave  Teutonic  power,  but  it  is  not  native  to  our  soil. 
It  is  not  the  first  true  English  poem.  That  is  the 
work  of  C^DMON,  and  it  was  made  in  Northumbria. 
The  story  of  it,  as  told  by  Baeda,  proves  that  the 
making  of  songs  was  common  at  the  time.  Caedmon 
was  a  servant  to  the  monastery  of  Hild,  an  abbess  of 
royal  blood,  at  Whitby  in  Yorkshire.  He  was  some- 
what aged  when  the  gift  of  song  came  to  him,  and  he 
knew  nothing  of  the  art  of  verse,  so  that  at  the  feasts 
when  for  the  sake  of  mirth  all  sang  in  turn  he  left  the 
table.  One  night,  having  done  so  and  gone  to  the 
stables,  for  he  had  care  of  the  cattle,  he  fell  asleep, 
and  One  came  to  him  in  vision  and  said,  **  Csedmon, 
sing  me  some  song/'  And  he  answered,  "  I  cannot 
sing;  for  this  cause  I  left  the  feast  and  came  hither." 
Then  said  the  other,  "  However,  you  shall  sing." 
"What  shall  I  sing?"  he  replied.  "Sing  the  begin- 
ning of  created  things,"  answered  the  other.  Where- 
upon he  began  to  sing  verses  to  the  praise  of  God, 
and,  awaking,  remembered  what  he  had  sung,  and 
added  more  in  verse  worthy  of  God.  In  the  morning 
he  came  to  the  steward,  and  told  him  of  the  gift  he 
had  received,  and,  being  brought  to  Hild,  was  ordered 


I.]        EARLY  WRITERS  TO  THE  CONQUEST,  13 

to  tell  his  dream  before  learned  men,  that  they  might 
give  judgment  whence  his  verses  came.  And  when 
they  had  heard,  they  all  said  that  heavenly  grace  had 
been  conferred  on  him  by  our  Lord. 

9.  Csedmon's  Poem,  written  about  670,  is  for 
us  the  beginning  of  English  poetry  in  England,  and 
the  story  of  its  origm  ought  to  be  loved  by  us.  Nor 
should  we  fail  to  reverence  the  place  where  it  began. 
Above  the  small  and  land-locked  harbour  of  Whitby, 
rises  and  juts  out  towards  the  sea  the  dark  cliff 
where  Hild's  monastery  stood,  looking  out  over  the 
German  Ocean.  It  is  a  wild,  wind-swept  upland,  and 
the  sea  beats  furiously  beneath,  and  standing  there 
we  feel  that  it  is  a  fitting  birthplace  for  the  poetry 
of  the  sea-ruUng  nation.  Nor  is  the  verse  of  the  first 
poet  without  the  stormy  note  of  the  scenery  among 
which  it  was  written,  nor  without  the  love  of  the  stars 
or  the  dread  of  the  waste  land  that  Caedmon  saw  from 
Whitby  Head. 

Caedmon  ]Daraphrased  the  history  of  the  Old  and 
New  Testament.  He  sang  the  creation  of  the  world, 
the  history  of  Israel,  the  book  of  Daniel,  the  whole 
story  of  the  life  of  Christ,  future  judgment,  purga- 
tory, hell,  and  heaven.  All  who  heard  it  thought 
it  divinely  given.  "  Others  after  him,"  says  Baeda, 
*'  tried  to  make  religious  poems,  but  none  could  vie 
with  him,  for  he  did  not  learn  the  art  of  poetry  from 
men,  nor  of  men,  but  from  God." 

The  interest  of  the  poem  is  not  found  in  the  telling 
of  the  Scripture  story,  but  in  those  parts  of  it  which 
are  the  invention  of  Caedmon,  in  the  drawing  of  the 
characters,  in  the  passages  instinct  with  the  genius  of 
our  race,  and  in  those  which  reveal  the  individuality 
of  the  poet.  The  fall  of  the  angels  and  the  Hell,  and 
the  proud  and  angry  cry  of  Satan  against  God  from 
his  bed  of  chains,  are  full  of  fierce  war-rage,  while  the 
contrasts  drawn  between  the  peace  of  heaven  and  the 
swart  horror  of  hell  have  the  same  kind  of  pathos  as 


14  ENGLISH  LITERATURE,  [chap. 

Milton's  work  on  the  same  subject.  The  pleasure  of 
the  northern  imagination  in  swiftness  and  in  joy  is  as 
well  marked  as  its  pleasure  in  wild  freedom,  in  dark 
pride,  and  in  revenge.  The  burst  of  fierce  and  joyous 
vengeance  when  the  fiend  succeeds  in  his  temptation 
is  magnificent.  There  is  true  dramatic  power  in  the ' 
dialogue  between  Eve  and  Satan,  and  between  Eve  ' 
and  Adam,  and  there  is  in  the  whole  scene  of  the 
temptation  a  subtle  quality  of  thought  which  we  do 
not  expect.  It  is  characteristic  of  Old- England  that 
the  motives  of  the  woman  for  eating  the  fruit  are  all 
good,  and  the  passionate  and  tender  conscientiousness 
of  the  scene  of  the  repentance  is  equally  characteristic 
of  the  gentler  and  religious  side  of  the  Teutonic 
character.  *'  Dark  and  true  and  tender  is  the  North.'' 
This  is  the  really  great  part  of  the  poem.  The  rest, 
with  the  exception  of  the  Flood,  the  Battle  of  Abraham 
with  Chedorlaomer,  and  the  passage  of  the  Red  Sea, 
is  so  dull  that  I  believe  the  work  of  the  original  poet 
was  filled  up  by  other  hands. ^  However  that  may  be, 
in  this  poem,  our  native  English  poetry  begins  with  a 
religious  poem,  and  it  gave  birth  to  many  children. 

]o.  English  Poetry  after  Csedmon  was  partly 
secular,  but  chiefly  religious.  The  secular  poetry  was 
sung  about  the  country,  but  the  increase  of  monasteries 
where  men  of  letters  lived,  naturally  made  the  written 
poetry  religious.  What  remains  is  chiefly  contained  in 
two  collections,  the  *'  Exeter  Book ''  and  the  "  Vercelli 
Book,"  both  named  from  the  places  where  the  manu- 
scripts now  are  preserved. 

During  the  short  period  when  literature  flourished 
in  the  South  at  the  end  of  the  seventh  century,  Eng- 
lish poetry  is  there  connected  with  the  name  of 
Ealdhelm.   a  young  man  when  Caedmon  died,  and 

1  Sievers  has  lately  tried  to  show  ("conclusively,"  says  Mr. 
Sweet)  that  a  great  portion  of  the  Paraphrase  is  a  translation 
from  an  old  Saxon  original,  perhaps  by  the  author  of  the 
Heiiatid, 


I.]        EARLY  WRITERS  TO  THE  CONQUEST.         15 

afterwards  Abbot  of  Malmesbury,  he  united  the  song- 
maker  to  the  rehgious  poet.  He  was  a  skilled  musi- 
cian, and  it  is  said  that  he  had  not  his  equal  in  the 
making  or  singing  of  English  verse.  His  songs  were 
popular  in  Kmg  Alfred's  time,  and  a  pretty  story 
tells,  that  when  the  traders  came  into  the  town  on  the 
Sunday,  he,  in  the  character  of  a  gleeman,  stood  on 
the  bridge  and  sang  them  songs,  with  which  he  inter- 
mingled Scripture  texts  and  teaching. 

But  the  English  poetry  which  died  in  the  South 
grew  rapidly  in  Northumbria  after  Caedmon's  death. 
We  do  not  know  the  date  nor  the  writer  of  Judith, 
but  it  belongs  to  the  best  time.  It  was  found  in  the 
same  MS.  as  Beowulf,  and  of  the  twelve  books  in 
which  it  was  originally  written,  we  only  possess  the 
three  last,  which  tell  of  the  banquet  of  Holofernes, 
his  death,  and  the  attack  of  the  Jews  on  the  Assyrian 
camp.  The  language  is  carefully  wrought,  the  verse 
varied  and  musical,  the  action  dramatic,  and  swiftly 
brought  to  its  conclusion.  It  is  really  a  poem  of  war, 
and  full  of  the  fire  of  war. 

1 1.  Cyne  wulf,  the  greatest  of  these  northern  poets, 
has  left  us  both  secular  and  religious  poems.  His 
name  is  given  in  a  ^tw  of  the  pieces  in  the  Exeter  and 
Vercelli  books.  But  it  is  very  probable  that  he  was 
the  writer  of  several  of  the  anonymous  poems.  He 
seems  to  have  been  a  minstrel  at  the  court  of  one  of 
the  Northumbrian  kings,  and  to  have  been  exiled  by 
one  of  the  wars  of  the  eighth  century.  He  was  then, 
he  says,  a  frivolous  and  sinful  man,  and  during  this 
period  he  wrote  the  lyric  pieces  attributed  to  him. 
Of  these  the  Wanderer^  and  the  Wife's  Complaint, 
and  the  Ruin  (if  we  may  allot  this  lovely  fragment 
to  him),  are  full  of  regret  and  yearning,  in  exile 
and  solitude,  for  the  lost  beauty  and  happiness  of  his 
world,  while  the  Seafarer  breathes  the  same  fasci- 
nation for  the  sea  which  filled  the  veins  of  our  fore- 
fathers  while   they   sang   and    sailed,  and  which  is 


i6  EA'GU^iJ  LJ  J  I. Mature.  [chap. 

strangely  re-echoed,  even  to  the  very  note  of  Cyne- 
wulf  s  song,  in  Tennyson's  Sailor  Boy.  The  Riddles^ 
of  which  this  poet  wrote  a  great  number,  show  how 
closely  and  with  what  love  he  observed  natural  beauty. 
But  a  change  came  over  him  in  his  old  age,  and  he 
devoted  himself  wholly  to  religious  poetry.  The 
Dream  of  the  Cross ^  in  which  he  teils  the  vision  which 
wrought  this  change,  is  a  piece  of  great  beauty.  It  is 
prefixed  to  the  Elene,  or  the  Finding  of  the  Cross, 
which  with  the  Crist  and  the  Passion  of  St.  Juliana, 
are  Cynewulfs  hymns  on  the  threefold  coming  of 
Christ.  The  evidence  of  style  is  relied  on  to  attri- 
bute also  to  Cynewulf  the  Life  of  St.  Gudlac,  (two 
poems,  on  the  Life  and  Death,  put  into  one,  the  Life 
probably  not  by  Cynewulf),  the  descriptive  poem  of 
the  Phoenix,  and  the  lyrics  mentioned  above.  He 
may  also  have  written  the  Andreas,  which  relates 
the  adventures  of  St.  Andrew  among  the  cannibal 
Marmedonians. 

Didactic  and  Gnomic  Poems,  metrical  ti-afislations  of 
the  Psalms,  and  metrical  hymns  and  prayers,  fill  up 
the  rest  of  the  Exeter  and  Vercelli  books.  One  fine 
fragment  in  which  Death  speaks  to  man,  and  describes 
the  low  and  hateful  and  doorless  house  of  which  he 
keeps  the  key,  does  not  belong  to  these  books,  and 
with  the  few  English  verses  Baeda  made  when  he  was 
dying,  tells  us  how  stern  was  the  thought  of  our 
fathers  about  the  grave.  But  stern  as  these  fragments 
are,  the  Old-English  religious  poetry  always  passes  on 
to  dwell  on  a  brighter  world.  Thus  we  are  told,  in 
the  Ode  in  the  Saxon  Chronicle,  that  King  Eadgar 
"  left  this  weak  life,  and  chose  for  himself  another  light, 
sweet  and  fair." 

12.  The  War  Poetry  of  England  at  this  time 
in  Northumbria  was  probably  as  plentiful  as  the 
religious,  but  it  was  not  likely  to  be  written  down  by 
the  men  of  letters  in  the  monasteries.  It  is  only  when 
literature  travelled  southwards  in  -Alfred's  time,  that 


I.]        EARLY  WRITERS  TO  THE  CONQUEST,         17 

we  hnd  any  written  war  songs,  and  of  these  there  are 
only  two,  the  Song  of  Brimanburh,  938,  and  the  Song 
of  the  Fight  at  Maldon,  998.  They  are  noble  poems, 
the  fitting  sources,  both  in  their  short  and  rapid  Hnes, 
and  in  their  simpHcity  and  force,  of  such  war  songs  as 
the  Battle  of  the  Baltic  and  the  Charge  of  the  Light 
Brigade,  The  first,  composed  expressly  for  the 
Chronicle,  and  inserted  in  it  instead  of  the  usual  prose 
entry,  describes  the  fight  of  King  ^thelstan  with 
Anlaf  the  Dane.  From  morn  till  night  they  fought 
till  they  were  "  weary  of  red  battle  in  the  hard  hand 
play,*'  till  five  young  kings  and  seven  earls  of  Anlaf  s 
host  lay  in  that  fighting  place  "  quieted  by  swords,'' 
and  the  Northmen  fled,  and  only  *^  the  screamers 
of  war  were  left  behind,  the  black  raven  and  the 
eagle  to  feast  on  the  white  flesh,  and  the  greedy 
battle-hawk,  and  the  grey  beast  the  wolf  in  the 
wood."  The  second  is  the  story  of  the  death  of 
Brihtnoth,  an  ealdorman  of  Northumbria,  in  battle 
against  the  Danes.  It  contains  690  lines.  In  the 
speeches  of  heralds  and  warriors  before  the  fight,  in 
the  speeches  and  single  combats  of  the  chiefs,  in  the 
loud  laugh  and  mock  which  follow  a  good  death- 
stroke,  in  the  rapid  rush  of  the  verse  when  the  battle 
is  joined,  the  poem,  though  broken,  as  Homer's  verse 
is  not,  is  Homeric.  In  the  rude  chivalry  which  dis- 
dains to  take  vantage  ground  of  the  Danes,  in  the  way 
in  which  the  friends  and  churls  of  Brihtnoth  die  one 
by  one,  avenging  their  lord,  keeping  faithful  the  tie  of 
kinship  and  clanship,  in  the  cry  not  to  yield  a  foot's 
breadth  of  earth,  in  the  loving  sadness  with  which 
home  is  spoken  of,  the  poem  is  English  to  the  core. 
And  in  the  midst  of  it  all,  like  a  song  from  another 
land,  but  a  song  heard  often  in  English  fights  from 
then  till  now,  is  the  last  prayer  of  the  great  earl, 
when  dying  he  commends  his  soul  with  thankfulness 
to  God. 

Two    short    odes,     among    several    small    poems 


l8  ENGLISH  LITERATURE.  [chap. 

inserted  in  the  Chronicle,  one  on  the  deliverance  of 
five  cities  from  the  Danes  by  King  Eadmund,  942  ; 
and  another  on  the  coronation  of  King  Eadgar,  are 
the  last  records  of  a  war  poetry  which  naturally  de- 
cayed when  the  English  were  trodden  down  by  the 
Normans.  When  Taillefer  rode  into  battle  at  Hastings, 
singing  songs  of  Roland  and  Charlemagne,  he  sang 
more  than  the  triumph  of  the  Norman  over  the  Eng- 
lish ;  he  sang  the  victory  for  a  time  of  French  Romance 
over  Old-EngHsh  poetry. 

13.  Old  English  Prose. — It  is  pleasant  to  think 
that  I  may  not  unfairly  make  English  prose  begin 
with  BiEDA.  He  was  born  about  a.d.  673,  and  was, 
like  C^edmon,  a  Northumbrian.  After  683,  he  spent 
his  life  at  Jarrow,  "  in  the  same  monastery,"  he  says, 
*^  and  while  attentive  to  the  rule  of  mine  order,  and 
the  service  of  the  Church,  my  constant  pleasure  lay 
in  learning,  or  teaching,  or  writing.''  He  enjoyed  that 
pleasure  for  many  years,  for  his  quiet  life  was  long, 
and  his  toil  was  unceasing  from  boyhood  till  he 
died.  Forty-five  works  prove  his  industry  ;  and  their 
fame  over  the  whole  of  learned  Europe  during  his 
time  proves  their  value.  His  learning  was  as  various  as 
it  was  great.  All  that  the  world  then  knew  of  science, 
music,  rhetoric,  medicine,  arithmetic,  astronomy,  and 
physics  were  brought  together  by  him  ;  and  his  life  was 
as  gentle,  and  himself  as  loved,  as  his  work  was  great. 
His  books  were  written  in  Latin,  and  with  these  we 
have  nothing  to  do,  but  his  was  the  first  effort  to 
make  English  prose  a  literary  language,  for  his  last 
work  was  a  Translation  of  the  Gospel  of  St.  John,  as 
almost  his  last  words  were  in  English  verse.  In  the 
story  of  his  death  told  by  his  disciple  Cuthbert  is 
the  first  record  of  English  prose  writing.  When  the  last 
day  came,  the  dying  man  called  his  scholars  to  him 
that  he  might  dictate  more  of  his  translation.  "  There 
is  still  a  chapter  wanting,"  said  the  scribe,  '*and  it  is 
hard  for  thee  to  question  tnyself  longer."  **  It  is  easily 


1.]         EARLY  WRITERS  TO  THE  CONQUEST         19 

done,"  said  Baeda,  '^take  thy  pen  and  write  quickly." 
Through  the  day  they  wrote,  and  when  evening  fell, 
^'  There  is  yet  one  sentence  unwritten,  dear  master," 
said  the  youth,  *'  Write  it  quickly,"  said  the  master. 
''•  It  is  finished  now."  '*  Thou  sayest  truth,"  was  the 
reply,  *' all  is  finished  now."  He  sang  the  ^*  Glory  to 
God  "  and  died.  It  is  to  that  scene  that  English  prose 
looks  back  as  its  sacred  source,  as  it  is  in  the  great- 
ness and  variety  of  Baeda's  Latin  work  that  English 
literature  strikes  its  key-note. 

14.  Alfred's  \/Vork.— When  Bseda  died,  North- 
umbria  was  the  home  of  prose  literature.  Though  as 
yet  written  mostly  in  Latin,  it  was  a  wide-spread 
literature.  Wilfrid  of  York  and  Benedict  Biscop  had 
founded  libraries,  and  established  far  and  wide  a 
number  of  monastic  schools.  Six  hundred  scholars 
gathered  round  Baeda  ere  he  died,  and  Alcuin,  a  pupil 
of  Egbert,  Archbishop  of  York,  carried  in  782  to  the 
court  of  Charles  the  Great  the  learning  and  piety  of 
England.  But  the  northern  literature  began  to  decay 
towards  the  end  of  the  eighth  century,  and  after  866 
it  was,  we  may  say,  blotred  out  by  the  Danes.  The 
long  battle  with  these  invaders  was  lost  in  Northum- 
bria,  but  it  was  gained  for  a  time  by  Alfred  the  Great 
in  Wessex;  and  with  Alfred's  literary  work,  learn- 
ing changed  its  seat  from  the  north  to  the  south. 
^Elfred's  writings  and  translations,  being  in  English 
and  not  in  Latin,  make  him,  since  Bseda' s  work  is 
lost,  the  true  father  of  English  prose.  As  Whitby 
is  the  cradle  of  English  poetry,  so  is  Winchester  of 
English  prose.  At  Winchester  the  King  took  the 
English  tongue  and  made  it  the  tongue  in  which 
history,  philosophy,  law  and  religion  spoke  to  the  Eng- 
lish people.  No  work  was  ever  done  more  eagerly  or 
more  practically.  He  brought  scholars  from  different 
parts  of  the  world.  He  set  up  schools  in  his  monas- 
teries *^  where  every  free-born  youth,  who  has  the 
means,   shall   attend  to   his   book   till  he  can  read 


20  ENGLISH  LITER  A  TURE,  [c  h  ap. 

English  writing  perfectly/'  He  presided  over  a  school 
in  his  own  court.  He  made  himself  a  master  of  a 
literary  English  style,  and  he  did  this  that  he  might 
teach  his  people.  He  translated  the  popular  manuals 
of  the  time  into  English,  but  he  edited  them  with 
large  additions  of  his  own,  needful  as  he  thought,  for 
English  use.  He  gave  his  nation  moral  philosophy  in 
Boethius's  Consolations  of  Philosophy ;  a  universal 
history,  with  geographical  chapters  of  his  own,^  in  the 
Histof-y  of  Orosius  ;  a  history  of  England  in  Bceda's 
History^  giving  to  some  details  a  West-Saxon  form  ; 
and  a  religious  handbook  in  the  Pastoral  Rule  of 
Pope  Gregory.  We  do  not  quite  know  whether  he 
worked  himself  at  the  E?2glish  or  Anglo-Saxofi  Chro- 
nicle^ but  at  least  it  was  in  his  reign  that  this  chronicle 
rose  out  of  meagre  lists  into  a  full  narrative  of  events. 
To  him,  then,  we  English  look  back  as  the  father  of 
English  prose  literature. 

15.  The  Later  Old  English  Prose.— The 
impulse  he  gave  soon  fell  away,  but  it  was  revived 
under  King  Eadgar  the  Peaceful,  whose  seventeen 
years  of  government  (958-75)  were  the  most  pros- 
perous and  glorious  of  the  West-Saxon  Empire. 
Under  him  ^thelwald,  Bishop  of  Winchester,  made 
it  his  work  to  keep  up  English  schools  and  to 
translate  Latin  works  into  English,  and  Archbishop 
Dunstan  carried  out  the  same  pursuits  with  his  own 
vigorous  intelligence,  ^thelwald's  school  sent  out 
from  it  a  scholar  and  abbot  named  ^lfric.  He 
is  the  first  large  translator  of  the  Bible,  turning  into 
English  the  Pentateuch,  Joshua,  Judges,  and  part  of 
Job.  The  rest  of  his  numerous  works  are  some  of 
the  best  models  we  possess  of  the  simple  literary 
English  of  the  beginning  of  the  eleventh  century.    The 

^  The  Voya^/'s  of  Ohthere  and  Wulfstan,  original  insertions  of 
Alfred  into  Orosius'  History,  will  be  found  in  Mr.  ^wt&i^sAnglo- 
Scxojt  Reader.  They  are  * '  of  the  highest  literary  and  philological 
yalue  as  specimens  of  the  natural  prose  of  Alfred." 


I.]         EARLY  WRITERS  TO  THE  CONQUEST         21 

Homilies  we  owe  to  him,  and  his  Lives  of  the  Saints  are 
written  in  a  classic  prose,  and  his  Colloquy,  afterwards 
edited  by  another ^Ifric,  may  be  called  the  first  English- 
Latm  dictionary.  But  this  revival  had  no  sooner  begun 
to  take  root  than  the  Northmen  came  again  in  force 
upon  the  land  and  conquered  it.  W  e  have  in  Wulfstan's 
(Archbishop  of  York,  1002-23)  Address  to  the  English, 
a  terrible  picture,  written  in  impassioned  prose,  of  the 
demoralisation  caused  by  the  mroads  of  the  Danes. 
During  the  long  interweaving  of  Danes  and  English 
together  under  Danish  kings  from  10 13  to  1042,  no 
English  literature  arose.  It  was  towards  the  quiet 
reign  of  Edward  the  Contessor  it  again  began  to  live. 
But  no  sooner  was  it  born  than  the  Norman  invasion 
repressed,  but  did  not  quench  its  hfe. 

16.  The  English  Chronicle. — One  great  monu- 
ment, however,  of  old  English  prose  lasts  beyond  the 
Conquest.  It  is  the  English  Chronicle,  and  in  it  our 
literature  is  continuous  from  Alfred  to  Stephen.  At 
first  it  was  nothing  but  a  record  of  the  births  and 
deaths  of  bishops  and  kings,  and  was  probably  a 
West- Saxon  Chronicle.  Among  these  short  notices 
there  is,  however,  one  tragic  story,  of  Cynewulf  and 
Cyneheard,  755,  so  rude  in  style,  and  so  circum- 
stantial, that  it  is  probably  contemporary  with  the 
events  themselves.  If  so,  it  is  the  oldest  piece  of 
historical  prose  in  any  Teutonic  tongue.  More  than 
a  hundred  years  later  Alfred  took  up  the  Chronicle, 
edited  it  from  various  sources,  added  largely  to  it  from 
Baeda,  and  raised  it  to  the  dignity  of  a  national  history. 
The  narrative  of  Alfred's  wars  with  the  Danes,  written, 
it  is  likely,  by  himself  at  the  end  of  his  reign,  enables 
us  to  estimate  the  great  weight  Alfred  himself  had 
in  literature.  **  Compared  with  this  passage,"  says 
Mr.  Earle,  **  every  other  piece  of  prose,  not  in  these 
Chronicles  merely,  but  throughout  the  whole  range  of 
extant  Saxon  literature,  must  assume  a  secondary  rank.'' 
After  Alfred's  reign,  and  that  of  his  son  Eadward, 


22  ENGLISH  LITER  A  TURE,  [chap. 

901-925,  the  Chronicle  becomes  scanty,  but  songs  and 
odes  are  inserted  in  it.  In  the  reign  of  ^thelred  and 
during  the  Danish  kings  its  fulness  returns,  and  grow- 
ing by  additions  from  various  quarters,  it  continues  to 
be  our  great  contemporary  authority  in  English  history 
till  1 1 54,  when  it  abruptly  closes  with  the  death  of 
Stephen.  "'  It  is  the  first  history  of  any  Teutonic 
people  in  their  own  language  ;  it  is  the  earUest  and  the 
most  venerable  monument  of  English  prose.^'  In  it 
Old  English  poetry  sang  its  last  song,  in  its  death  Old 
English  prose  dies.  It  is  not  till  the  reign  of  Join 
that  English  poetry  m  any  form  but  that  of  short 
poems  appears  again  in  the  Brut  of  Layamon.  It  is 
not  till  the  reign  of  Edward  III.  that  original  English 
prose  again  begins. 


CHAPTER  II. 

FROM  THE  CONQUEST  TO  CHAUCER's  DEATH, 

1066-MOO. 

Layamon's  Brut^  1205^  —  Ormin's  Ormulum,  1215.  —  Sir 
John  Mandeville's  Travels,  1356- — William  Langland's 
Vision  coficerning  Piers  the  Plowmmi,  3  texts,  1362,  77,  93. 
John  Wyclif's  Translation  of  the  Bible,  1380. —  John 
Gower's  Confessio  Ainantis,  1393 — 4- 

GeolTrey  Chaucer,  horn  1340,  died  1400. — Dethe  of  Blaiivche 
the  D^ichesse,  1339- — Troylus  and  Creseide. — Parlament 
of  Foules. — Cothpleynt  of  Mars. — Anelida  and  Arcite. — 
Hous  of  Fame,  1374 — 1384- — Legende  of  Good  Women, 
1385 •—-^''^•^^  Treatise  on  Astrolabe,  1391* — Canterbury 
Tales,  1373  to  1400. 

17.  General  Outline. — The  invasion  of  Britain 
by  the  English  made  the  island,  its  speech,  and  its 
literature,  English.  The  invasion  of  England  by  the 
Danes  left  our  speech  and  literature  still  Enghsh. 
The  Danes  were  of  our  stock  and  tongue,  and  we 
absorbed  them.      The   invasion  of  England  by  the 


II.]        FROM  THE  CONQUEST  TO  CHAUCER.  23 

Normans  seemed  likely  to  crush  the  EngHsh  people, 
to  root  out  their  literature,  and  even  to  threaten  their 
speech.  But  that  which  happened  to  the  Danes  hap- 
pened to  the  Normans  also,  and  for  the  same  reason. 
They  were  originally  of  like  blood  to  the  English, 
and  of  like  speech  ;  and  though  during  their  settle- 
ment in  Normandy  they  had  become  French  in 
manner  and  language,  and  their  literature  French, 
yet  the  old  blood  prevailed  in  the  end.  The  Nor- 
man felt  his  kindred  with  the  English  tongue  and 
spirit,  became  an  Englishman,  and  left  the  French 
tongue  to  speak  and  write  in  P^^nglish.  We  absorbed 
the  Normans,  and  we  took  into  our  literature  and 
speech  some  French  elements  they  had  brought  with 
them.  It  was  a  process  slower  in  literature  than  it 
was  in  the  political  history,  but  it  began  from  the 
political  struggle.  Up  to  the  time  of  Henry  II.  the 
Norman  troubled  himself  but  litde  about  the  English 
tongua.  But  when  French  foreigners  came  pouring 
into  the  land  in  the  train  of  Henry  and  his  sons,  the 
Norman  allied  himself  with  the  Englishman  against 
these  foreigners,  and  the  English  tongue  began  to 
rise  into  importance.  Its  literature  grew  slowly,  but 
as  quickly  as  most  of  the  literatures  of  Europe,  and 
it  never  ceased  to  grow.  We  are  carried  on  to  the 
year  1154  by  the  prose  of  the  Enghsh  Chronicle. 
There  are  old  English  homilies  which  we  may  date 
from  1 1 20.  The  so-called  Moral  Ode,  an  English 
riming  poem,  was  compiled  about  the  year  11 60, 
and  is  found  in  a  volume  of  homilies  of  the  same 
date.  In  the  reign  of  Henry  II.,  the  old  Southern* 
EngHsh  Gospels  of  King  ^thelred's  time  were  modern- 
ised after  200  years  or  less  of  use.  The  Sayings  of 
Alfred,  written  in  English  for  the  English,  were  com- 
posed about  the  year  1200.  About  the  same  date  the 
old  English  Charters  of  Bury  St.  Edmunds  were  trans- 
lated into  the  dialect  of  the  shire,  and  now,  early  in 
the  thirteenth  century,  at  the  central  time  of  the  strife 


24  ENGLISH  LITER  A  TUBE,  [chap. 

between  English  and  foreign  elements,  after  the  death 
of  Richard  L,  the  Brut  of  Layamon  and  the  Ormulum 
come  forth  within  ten  years  of  each  other  to  prove 
the  continuity,  the  survival,  and  the  victory  of  the 
English  tongue.  When  the  patriotic  struggle  closed 
in  the  reign  of  Edward  I.,  English  literature  had 
again  risen,  through  the  song,  the  sermon,  and 
the  poem,  into  importance,  and  was  written  by  a 
people  made  up  of  Norman  and  Englishman  welded 
into  one  by  the  fight  against  the  toreigner.  But 
though  the  foreigner  was  driven  out,  his  literature  in- 
fluenced, and  continued  to  influence,  the  new  Eng- 
lish poetry.  The  poetry,  we  say,  for  in  this  revival 
our  literature  was  chiefly  poetical.  Prose,  with  but 
few  exceptions,  was  written  in  Eatin. 

i8.  Religious  and  Story-telling  Poetry  are 
the  two  main  streams  into  which  this  poetical  litera- 
ture divides  itself.  The  religious  poetry  is  entirely 
English  in  spirit,  and  a  poetry  of  the  people,  from  the 
Ormulum  of  Ormin,  12 15,  to  the  Vision  of  Piers  the 
Plowman,  in  which  poem  the  distinctly  English  poetry 
reached  its  truest  expression  in  1362.  The  story-telling 
poetry  is  English  at  its  beginning,  but  becomes  more 
and  more  influenced  by  the  romantic  poetry  of  France, 
and  in  the  end  grows  in  Chaucer's  hands  into  a  poetry 
of  the  court  and  of  high  society,  a  literary  in  contrast 
with  a  popular  poetry.  But  even  in  this  the  spirit  of 
the  poetry  is  English,  though  the  manner  is  French. 
Chaucer  becomes  less  French  and  even  less  Italian 
in  manner,  till  at  last  we  find  him  entirely  English  in 
feeling — though  he  borrows  some  of  his  subjects 
from  foreign  stories — in  the  Canterbury  Tales,  the 
best  example  of  English  story-telling  we  possess. 
The  struggle  then  of  England  against  the  foreigner 
to  become  and  remain  England  finds  its  parallel 
in  the  struggle  of  English  poetry  against  the  influ- 
ence of  foreign  poetry  to  become  and  remain  Eng- 
lish.    Both  struggles  were  long  and  wearisome,  but 


II.         FROM  THE  CO h QUEST  TO  CHAUCER,  25 

in  both  England  was  triumphant.  She  became  a 
nation,  and  she  won  a  national  literature.  It  is  the 
course  of  this  struggle  we  have  now  to  trace  along 
the  two  Imes  already  laid  down — the  poetry  of  re- 
ligion and  the  poetry  of  story-telling;  but  to  do 
so  we  must  begin  in  both  instances  with  the  Norman 
Conquest. 

19.  The  Religious  Poetry. — The  religious  re- 
vival of  the  eleventh  century  was  strongly  felt  in 
Normandy,  and  both  the  knights  and  Churchmen  who 
came  to  England  with  William  the  Conqueror  and 
during  his  son's  reign,  were  founders  of  abbeys, 
from  which,  as  centres  of  learning  and  charity, 
the  country  was  civilised.  In  Henry  I.'s  reign  the 
religion  of  England  was  further  quickened  by  mis- 
sionary monks  sent  by  Bernard  of  Clairvaux.  London 
was  stirred  to  rebuild  St.  Paul's,  and  abbeys  rose 
in  all  the  w^ell-watered  valleys  of  the  North.  The 
English  citizens  of  London  and  the  English  peasants 
in  the  country  received  a  new  religious  life  from  the 
foreign  noble  and  the  foreign  monk,  and  both  were 
drawn  together  through  a  common  worship.  When 
this  took  place  a  desire  arose  for  religious  handbooks 
in  the  English  tongue.  Ormin's  Ofmulum  is  a  type  of 
these.  We  may  date  it,  though  not  precisely,  at  1215, 
the  date  of  the  Great  Charter.  It  is  entirely  English, 
not  five  French  words  are  to  be  found  in  it.  It  is  a 
metrical  version  of  the  service  of  each  day  with  the 
addition  of  a  sermon  in  verse.  The  book  was  called 
Ormuhcm,  ^'  for  this,  that  Orm  it  wrought.'^  It 
marks  the  rise  of  English  religious  literature,  and 
its  religion  is  simple  and  rustic.  Orm's  ideal  monk 
is  to  be  *^  a  very  pure  man,  and  altogether  without 
property,  except  that  he  shall  be  found  in  simple 
meat  and  clothes."  He  will  have  "a  hard  and  stiff 
and  rough  and  heavy  life  to  lead.  All  his  heart 
and  desire  ought  to  be  aye  toward  heaven,  and 
his  Master  well  to  serve."      This  was  English  religion 


26  ENGLISH  LITERATURE,  [chap. 

in  the  country  at  this  date.  It  was  continued  in 
English  writing  by  the  Ancren  Riwie — the  Rule  of 
the  Anchoresses — written  about  1220,  in  the  Dorset- 
shire dialect.  The  Genesis  and  Exodus,  a  biblical  poem 
of  about  1250,  was  made  by  the  pious  writer  to  make 
Christian  men  as  glad  as  i3irds  at  the  dawning  for 
the  story  of  salvation.  A  Northumbrian  Psalter  of 
1250  is  only  one  example*  out  of  many  devotional 
pieces,  homilies,  metrical  creeds,  hymns  to  the  Virgin, 
which,  with  the  metrical  Lives  of  the  Samts  (a  la'rge 
volume,  the  lives  translated  from  Latin  or  French 
prose  into  English  verse),  carry  the  religious  poetry  up 
to  1300. 

20.  Literature  and  the  Friars. — There  was 
little  religion  in  the  towns,  but  this  was  soon  changed. 
In  1221  the  Mendicant  Friars  came  to  England,  and 
they  chose  the  towns  for  their  work.  The  first  Friars 
who  learnt  English  that  they  might  preach  to  the 
people  were  foreigners,  and  spoke  French.  Many 
English  Friars  studied  in  Paris,  and  came  back  to 
England,  able  to  talk  to  Norman  noble  and  English 
peasant.  Their  influence,  exercised  both  on  Norman 
and  English,  was  thus  a  mediatory  and  uniting  one, 
and  Normans  as  well  as  English  now  began  to  write 
religious  works  in  English.  In  1303  Robert  Manning  of 
Brunne  translated  a  French  poem,  the  Manual  of  Sins 
(written  thirty  years  earlier  by  William  of  Waddington), 
under  the  title  of  Handlyng  Synne.  William  of 
Shoreham  translated  the  whole  of  the  Psalter  into 
English  prose  about  1327,  and  wrote  reHgious  poems. 
The  Cursor  Mundt,  written  about  1320,  and  thought 
"  the  best  book  of  all "  by  men  of  that  time,  was  a 
metrical  version  of  the  Old  and  New  Testament,  inter- 
spersed, as  was  the  Handlyng  Synne,  with  legends  of 
saints.  Some  scattered  Sermons,  and  in  1340  the 
Ayenbite  of  Inwyt  {^tvnorsQ  of  Conscience),  translated 
from  the  French,  mark  how  English  prvse  was  rising 
through  religion.     About  the  same  year  Richard  RoUe 


II.]       FROM  THE  CONQUEST  TO  CHAUCER,         27 

of  Hampole  wrote  in  Latin  and  in  Northumbrian 
English  for  the  "unlearned,"  a  poem  called  the  Fricke 
of  Consde?ice,  and  some  prose  treatises.  This  poem  is 
the  last  religious  poem  of  any  importance  before  the 
Vision  of  Piers  the  Ploivman.  At  its  date,  1340,  the 
religious  influence  of  the  Friars  was  swiftly  decaying. 
They  had  been  attacked  twenty  years  before  it,  in  a 
poem  of  1320,  and  twenty  years  after  it,  in  1360,  their 
influence  was  wholly  gone.  In  Piers  Plowman  (1362) 
the  protest  Langland  makes  for  purity  of  life  is  also  a 
protest  against  the  foul  life  and  the  hypocrisy  of  the 
Friars.  In  that  poem,  as  we  shall  see,  the  whole  of  the 
popular  English  religion  of  the  time  of  Chaucer  is  re- 
presented. In  it  also  the  natural,  unliterary,  country 
English  is  best  represented.  It  brings  us  up  in  the 
death  of  its  author  to  the  year  1400,  the  same  year 
in  which  Chaucer  died. 

21.  History  and  the  Story-telling  Poetry. — 
The  Normans  brought  an  historical  taste  with  them 
to  England,  and  created  a  valuable  historical  litera- 
ture. It  was  written  in  Latin,  and  we  have  nothing 
to  do  with  it  till  story- telling  grew  out  of  it  in  the 
time  of  the  Great  Charter.  But  it  was  in  itself  of  such 
importance  that  a  few  things  must  be  said  about  it. 

(i)  The  men  who  wrote  it  were  called  Chron- 
iclers. At  first  they  were  mere  annalists — that  is,  they 
jotted  down  the  events  of  year  after  year  without 
any  attempt  to  bind  them  together  into  a  connected 
whole.  But  afterwards,  from  the  time  of  Henry  I., 
another  class  of  men  arose,  who  wrote,  not  in  scat- 
tered monasteries,  but  in  the  Court.  Living  at  the 
centre  of  political  life,  their  histories  were  written  in  a 
philosophic  spirit,  and  wove  into  a  whole  the  growth 
of  law  and  national  life  and  the  story  of  affairs  abroad. 
They  are  our  great  authorities  for  the  history  of  these 
times.  They  begin  with  William  of  Malmesbiiry, 
whose  book  ends  in  1142,  and  die  out  after  Matthew 
Paris,    1235 — 73.      Historical    literature,    written    in 


28  ENGLISH  LITER  A  TURE.  [chap. 

prose  in  England,  is  only  represented  after  the  death 
of  Henry  III.  by  a  few  dry  Latin  annausts  till  it  rose 
again  in  modern  English  prose  in  15 13,  when  Sir 
Thomas  More's  Life  of  Edward  K  and  Usurpation  of 
Richard  III,  is  said  to  have  been  written. 

(2)  A  distinct  English  Feeling  soon  sprang  up 
among  these  Norman  historians.  English  patriotism 
was  far  from  having  died  among  the  English  them- 
selves. The  Sayings  of  Alfred  were  written  in 
English  by  the  English.  These  and  some  ballads, 
as  well  as  the  early  English  war-songs,  interested  the 
Norman  historians  and  were  collected  by  them.  Wil- 
liam of  Malmesbury,  who  was  born  of  English  and 
Norman  parents,  has  sympathies  with  both  peoples, 
and  his  history  marks  how  both  were  becoming  one 
nation.  The  same  welding  together  of  the  conquered 
and  the  conquerors  is  seen  in  the  others  till  we  come 
to  Matthew  Paris,  whose  view  of  history  is  entirely 
that  of  an  Englishman.  When  he  wrote,  Norman 
noble  and  English  yeoman,  Norman  abbot  and  Eng- 
lish priest,  were,  and  are  in  his  pages,  one  in  blood 
and  one  in  interests. 

22.  English  Story-telling  grew  out  of  this  his- 
torical literature.  There  was  a  Welsh  priest  at  the 
court  of  Henry  I.,  called  Geoffrey  of  Monmouth, 
who,  inspired  by  the  Genius  of  romance,  composed 
twelve  short  books,  which  he  playfully  called  History. 
He  had  been  given,  he  said,  an  ancient  Welsh  book 
to  translate  which  told  in  verse  the  history  of  Britain 
from  the  days  when  Brut,  the  great-grandson  of 
.'Eneas,  landed  on  its  shores,  through  the  whole  his- 
tory of  King  Arthur  and  his  Round  Table  down  to 
Cadwallo,  a  Welsh  king  who  died  in  689.  The  Latin 
"translation  "  he  made  of  this  apocryphal  book  he  com- 
pleted in  1 147.  The  real  historians  were  angry  at 
the  fiction,  and  declared  that  throughout  the  whole  of 
It  *'he  had  lied  saucily  and  shamelessly."  It  was 
(ndeed  only  a  clever  putting  together  and  invention 


II.]       FPOM  THE  CONQUEST  TO  CHAUCER.         29 

of  a  number  of  Welsh  legends,  but  it  was  the  beginning 
of  story-belling  in  our  land.  Every  one  who  read  it 
was  delighted  with  it ;  it  made,  as  we  should  say,  a 
sensation,  and  as  much  on  the  Continent  as  in  Eng- 
land. In  it  the  Welsh,  as  I  have  said,  invaded 
English  literature,  and  their  tales  have  never  since 
ceased  to  live  in  it.  They  charm  us  as  much  in 
Tennyson's  Idylls  of  the  Ki?ig  as  they  charmed  us  in 
the  days  of  Henry  I.  But  the  stories  Geoffrey  of 
Monmouth  told  were  in  Latin  prose.  They  were  put 
first  into  French  verse  by  Geoffrey  Gaimar  for  the  wife 
of  his  patron,  Ralph  FitzGilbert,  a  northern  baron. 
They  got  afterwards  to  France  and,  added  to  from 
Breton  legends,  were  made  into  a  poem  and  decked 
out  with  the  ornaments  of  French  romance.  In  that 
form  they  came  back  to  England  as  the  work  of  Wace, 
a  Norman  trouveur,  the  writer  also  of  the  Roma7i  de 
Rou,  who  called  his  poem  the  Brut^  and  completed 
it  in  1 155,  shortly  after  the  accession  of  Henry  II. 

23.  Layamon's  '*  Brut.'' — In  this  French  form 
the  story  drifted  through  England,  and  at  last  falling 
into  the  hands  of  an  English  priest  in  Worcestershire, 
he  resolved  to  tell  it  in  English  verse  to  his  country- 
men, and  doing  so  became  the  writer  of  our  first 
English  poem  after  the  Conquest.  We  may  roughly 
say  that  its  date  is  1205,  ten  years  or  so  before  the 
Oiinuliifn  was  written,  ten  years  before  the  Great 
Charter.  It  is  plain  that  its  composition,  though  it 
told  a  Welsh  story,  was  looked  on  as  a  patriotic  work 
by  the  writer.  "There  was  a  priest  in  the  land,''  he 
writes  of  himself,  "  whose  name  was  Layamon ;  he 
was  son  of  Leovenath ;  May  the  Lord  be  gracious 
unto  him  !  He  dwelt  at  Earnley,  a  noble  church  on 
the  bank  of  Severn,  near  Radstone,  where  he  read 
books.  It  came  in  mind  to  him  and  in  his  chiefest 
thought  that  he  would  tell  the  noble  deeds  of  England, 
what  the  men  w^re  named,  and  whence  they  came, 
who  first  had  English  land."   And  it  was  truly  of  great 


30  ENGLISH  LITER  A  TURE,  [chap. 

importance.  The  poem  opened  to  the  imagination  of 
the  English  people  an  immense,  though  a  fabled,  past 
for  the  history  of  the  island  they  dwelt  in,  and  made 
a  common  bond  of  interest  between  Norman  and 
Englishman.  Though  chiefly  rendered  from  the 
French,  there  are  not  fifty  French  words  in  its  30,000 
lines.  The  old  English  alliterative  metre  is  kept  up 
with  a  few  rare  rimes.  As  we  read  the  short  quick 
lines  in  which  the  battles  are  described,  as  we  listen 
to  the  simple  metaphors,  and  feel  the  strong,  rude 
character  of  the  poem,  we  are  put  in  mind  of  Csedmon  ; 
and  what  Caedmon  was  to  early  English  poetry, 
Layamon  is  to  English  poetry  after  the  Conquest.  He 
is  the  first  of  the  new  singers. 

24.  Story-telling  grows  French  in  form. — 
After  an  interval  the  desire  for  story-telhng  increased 
in  England.  I'he  Romance  of  Sir  Tristram  was,  it  is 
supposed,  versified  in  1270,  and  many  other  tales  of 
Arthur's  Knights,  and  some  stories  which  had  an 
English  origin,  such  as  the  lays  of  Havelok  the  Dane 
and  of  King  Horn  (both  about  1280),  were  translated 
from  the  French,  while  Edward  I.  was  makmg  Norman 
and  English  into  one  people.  The  Romance  of  King 
Alexander,  originally  a  Greek  work,  was,  at  the  same 
date,  adapted  from  the  French  into  English,  and  about 
1300  Robert  of  Gloucester  wrote  his  Rifning  Chronicle, 
a  history  of  England  from  Brutus  to  the  reign  of 
Edward  I.^  As  the  dates  grow  nearer  to  1300,  seven 
years  before  the  death  of  Edward  I.,  the  amount  of 
French  words  increases,  and  the  French  romantic 
manner  of  telling  stories  is  more  and  more  marked. 

^  I  may  mention  in  this  place  that  between  1327  and  1338, 
Robert  of  Brunne  whose  Handlyng  Stnne  is  spoken  of  at  p.  26, 
made  another  English  Chronicle,  translating  the  first  part  from 
Wace's  Brut^  p.  29,  and  the  second  part  from  Peter  Langtoft's 
French  Metrical  Chronicle,  It  is  a  fresh  instance  of  the  eager- 
ness with  which  French  work  was  now  got  into  English,  for 
Langtoft,  a  Canon  of  Bridlington,  had  only  written  his  Chronicle 
a  few  years  before. 


II.]        FROM  THE  CONQUEST  TO  CHAUCER,  31 

In  the  Lay  of  Havelok  the  spirit  and  descriptions  of 
the  poem  still  resemble  old  English  work ;  in  the 
Romance  of  Alexander^  on  the  other  hand,  the  natural 
landscape,  the  conventional  introductions  to  the  parts, 
the  gorgeous  descriptions  of  pomps,  and  armour,  and 
cities,  the  magic  wonders,  the  manners,  and  feasts,  and 
battles  of  chivalry,  the  love  passages,  are  all  steeped 
in  the  colours  of  French  romantic  poetry.  Now  this 
romance  was  adapted  by  a  Frenchman  about  the  year 
1200.  It  took  therefore  nearly  a  century  before  the 
French  romantic  manner  of  poetry  could  be  natural- 
ised in  English ;  and  it  was  naturalised,  curious  to 
say,  at  the  very  time  when  England  as  a  nation  had 
lost  its  French  elements  and  become  entirely  English. 

25.  Cycles  of  Romance,— At  this  time,  then,  the 
French  romance  of  a  hundred  years  earlier  was  popu- 
larised in  England.  There  were  four  great  romantic 
stories.  The  first  was  that  of  King  Arthur  and  the 
Round  Table,  and  Geoffrey  of  Monmouth  introduced 
it  into  England,  p.  28.  Walter  Map,  a  councillor 
and  friend  of  Henry  IL,  and  afterwards  Archdeacon 
of  York,  took  up  Geoffrey's  work,  and  threw  into  form, 
in  Latin,  all  the  Arthur  legends.  He  invented  and 
added  to  them  the  story  of  the  Quest  of  the  Graal 
(the  Holy  Dish  that  contained  the  sacramental  blood 
of  Christ  and  the  Paschal  Lamb),  and  made  it  their 
centre.  By  this  invention  he  bound  all  the  Arthur 
legends  up  with  the  highest  doctrine  of  the  Church. 
Afterwards  he  added  the  Morte  d' Arthur,  The  im- 
pulse thus  given  was  continued  at  home  and  abroad 
in  the  invention  of  new  Arthurian  stories,  and  by 
1300  they  were  all  popular  in  England  and  sung  and 
made  into  English  verse. 

The  second  romantic  story  was  that  of  Charlemagne 
and  his  twelve  peers.  Forged  about  mo  in  the 
name  of  Archbishop  Turpin,  it  excited  interest  in  the 
Crusades  by  inventing  a  visit  of  Charlemagne's  to  the 
Holy  Sepulchre  and  various  stories  and  battles  of  his 


32  ENGLISH  LITERATURE,  [chap. 

peers  with  the  Saracens  in  Spain.  Of  the  number  of 
romances  which  grew  out  of  this  subject,  we  English 
have  only  six  poems  or  fragments  of  poems,  one  of 
Roland^  one  of  Otmvell,  one  of  Charlemagne  and 
Roland,  a  Siege  of  Milan,  Sir  Ferumbras  in  three  or 
four  different  versions,  and  the  humorous  Rouf  Coill- 
yean.  Their  dates  extend  over  the  fourteenth  and 
fifteenth  centuries. 

The  third  romantic  story  arose  after  the  Crusades, 
and  is  that  of  the  Life  of  Alexander,  already  alluded 
to  as  coming  from  the  East.  Its  romantic  wonders, 
fictions,  and  magic,  partly  derived  from  the  Arabian 
books  about  Eskander  (Alexander),  were  doubled  by 
the  imagination  and  coloured  with  all  the  romance  of 
chivalry ;  and  the  story  became  so  common  in  Eng- 
land that  "  every  wight  that  hath  discrecioune,"  says 
Chaucer,  had  heard  of  Alexander's  fortune. 

The  fourth  romantic  story  was  that  of  the  Siege  of 
Troy.  Two  Latin  pieces,  bearing  the  names  of  Dares 
Phrygius  and  of  Dictys  Cretensis,  composed  in  the 
decline  of  Latin  literature,  were  taken  up  by  Guido  di 
Colonna  of  Messina  about  1260,  and  with  fabulous  and 
romantic  inventions  of  his  own,  and  with  additions 
woven  into  them  from  the  Theban  and  Argonautic 
stories  (so  that  Jason  and  Hercules  and  Theseus  were 
incorporated  into  romance),  were  made  into  a  great 
Latin  story  in  fifteen  books.  It  does  not  seem  to  have 
much  entered  mto  English  literature  till  Chaucer's 
time,  but  Chaucer  and  Lydgate  both  used  it. 

These  were  the  four  great  Romantic  cycles,  which 
we  popularised  from  the  French.  But  the  desire 
for  romances  was  not  satisfied  with  these.  About 
the  reign  of  Edward  I.  a  romance  of  Richard 
Cceur  de  Lion,  and  about  1360  the  Romance  of 
William  and  the  Wer^iwlf  were  both  translated  from 
the  French.  Chaucer  mentions  Sir  Bevis  of  South- 
ampton^ Sir  Guy  of  Warwick,  the  Squire  of  Low 
Degree,  Ypotis  a  theological  story,  Sidrac,  and  others. 


II.]        FROM  THE  CONQUEST  TO  CHAUCER.  33 

There  were  also  Syr  Degore  (L'Egare),  King  Robert  of 
Sicily,  the  Kijig  of  Tars,  Ipomydon,  Odavian  the  Em- 
perour,  &c.,  ail  taken  from  the  French,  and  made 
English  in  the  times  of  the  Edwards.  The  country- 
was  therefore  swarming  with  French  tales,  and  its 
poetic  imagination  with  the  fancies  and  the  fables  of 
French  chivalry.  Finally,  the  influence  of  this  French 
school  in  England  is  seen  in  the  stories  of  Gower,  and 
in  the  earlier  poems  of  Chaucer.  It  lasted  on,  after 
Chaucer's  death,  in  such  poems  as  the  Court  of 
Love,  written  about  1470,  and  wrongly  attributed  to 
Chaucer.  It  came  to  its  height  in  the-  translation  of 
the  Romaunt  of  the  Rose,  the  crowning  effort  also  of 
French  romance,  but  of  a  new  type  of  romance,  that 
of  the  Allegory  of  Love.  After  the  earlier  poems  of 
Chaucer  the  story-telling  of  England  sought  its  sub- 
jects in  another  country  than  France.  It  turned  to 
Italy. 

26.  English  Lyrics. —  In  the  midst  of  all  this 
story-telling,  like  prophecies  of  what  should  after- 
wards be  so  lovely  in  our  poetry,  rose,  no  one  can 
tell  how,  some  lyric  poems,  country  idylls,  love  songs, 
and,  later  on,  some  war  songs.  The  English  ballad, 
sung  from  town  to  town  by  wandering  gleemen,  had 
never  altogether  died.  A  number  of  rude  ballads 
collected  round  the  legendary  Robin  Hood,  and  the 
kind  of  poetic  literature  which  sung  of  the  outlaw 
and  the  forest,  and  afterwards  so  fully  of  the  wild 
border  life,  gradually  took  form.  About  1280  a  beau- 
tiful little  idyll  called  the  Owl  and  the  Nightingale 
was  written,  probably  in  Dorsetshire,  in  which  the 
rival  birds  submit  their  quarrel  for  precedence  to  the 
possible  writer  of  the  poem,  Nicholas  of  Guildford. 
About  1300  we  meet  with  a  few  lyric  poems,  full  of 
charm.  They  sing  of  spring-time  with  its  blossoms,  of 
the  woods  ringing  with  the  thrush  and  nightingale, 
of  .the  flowers  and  the  seemly  sun,  of  country  work,  of 
the  woes  and  joys  of  love,  and  many  other  delightful 


34  ENGLISH  LITERA  TURE,  [chap. 

things.  They  are  tinged  with  the  colour  of  French 
romance,  but  they  have  an  Enghsh  background.  We 
read  nothing  like  them,  except  in  Scotland,  till  we 
come  to  the  Elizabethan  time.  About  the  same  date 
we  find  the  satirical  poem  of  the  Latid  of  Cockaygne, 
(coquina^  a  kitchen),  where  the  monks  live  in  an 
abbey  built  of  pasties,  and  the  rivers  run  with  wine, 
and  the  geese  fly  through  the  air  ready  roasted,  and 
a  fair  nunnery  is  close  by,  upon  a  river  of  sweet  milk. 
The  old  ^/^^w/V- poetry  returns  in  the  Pi'overhs  of  Hen- 
dyng,  1272,  1307.  Political  ballads  now  btgan,  in 
Edward  I.'s  reign,  to  be  frequently  written  in  English, 
but  the  only  ballads  of  importance  are  that  on  the 
battle  of  Lewes,  1264,  and  the  ten  war-lyrics  of 
Lawrence  Minot,  who,  in  1352,  sang  the  great  deeds 
and  battles  of  Edward  IIL 

27.  1  he  King's  English. — We  have  thus  traced 
the  rise  of  our  English  literature  to  the  time  of  Chaucer, 
We  must  now  complete  the  sketch  by  a  word  or  two 
on  the  language  in  which  it  was  written.  The  literary 
English  language  seemed  at  first  to  be  destroyed  by  the 
Conquest.  It  lingered  till  Stephen's  death  in  the 
English  Chronicle ;  a  few  traces  of  it  are  still  found 
about  Henry's  IIL's  death  in  the  Brut  oi  Layamon. 
But,  practically  speaking,  from  the  twelfth  century  till 
the  middle  of  the  fourteenth  there  was  no  standard  of 
English.  The  language,  spoken  only  by  the  people, 
fell  back  into  that  broken  state  of  anarchy  in  which 
each  part  of  the  country  has  its  own  dialect,  and  each 
writer  uses  the  dialect  of  his  own  dwelHng-place.  All 
che  poems  then  of  which  we  have  spoken  were  written 
in  dialects  of  English,  not  in  a  fixed  English  common 
to  all  writers.  French  or  Latin  was  the  language  of 
literature  and  of  the  literary  class.  But  towards 
the  middle  of  Edward  III.'s  reign  EngHsh  got  the 
better  of  French.  After  the  Black  Death  in  1349 
French  was  less  used  ;  in  1362  English  was  made  the 
language   of  the   courts   of  law.     \r\  the  meantime, 


II.]       FROM  THE  CONQUEST  TO  CHAUCER,         35 

during  the  prevalence  of  French,  English  prose  and 
poetry  had  been  invaded  by  French  words.  The 
Ancren  Riwle^  fifteen  years  after  the  Brut  of  Laya- 
mon,  is  full  of  them,  and  after  Henry  III.'s  death  a 
host  of  them  rushed  in,  and  the  old  English  words 
died  out  in  proportion.  One-seventh  of  the  old  Eng- 
Hsh  verbs,  adverbs,  and  nouns  used  in  1200  are  gone 
in  1300.  Against  250  Romance  words  used  in  1200, 
we  have  800  used  in  1300.  A  great  deal  of  this  work 
was  done  by  the  Friars.  The  medicine,  the  science 
of  the  time,  were  in  their  hands,  and  from  1220  they 
mixed  themselves  up,  both  by  preaching  and  in  society, 
with  the  crafts  of  the  merchantmen  and,  interlarding 
all  their  speech  with  French  words,  made  these  words 
common  among  the  crafts  and  the  middle  plasses, 
till  they  stole  in  even  into  the  Creed  and  the  Lord's 
Prayer.  Architecture,  of  course,  became  French  in 
terms  ;  the  Norman  ladies  introduced  French  terms  of 
dress,  and  of  all  the  arts  and  trades  that  ministered  to 
their  luxury.  The  knight  brought  in  French  terms  for 
all  the  matters  that  had  to  do  with  war  and  hunting 
and  cookery ;  the  lawyer,  French  terms  that  belonged 
to  law  and  government ;  while  the  Friars,  talking  to 
the  people  of  the  vices,  luxury,  customs  and  Uves  of 
the  upper  class,  made  all  these  new  French  words 
common  to  the  ears  of  the  English-speaking  classes. 
A  great  change  was  thus  wrought  in  the  English 
language.  At  the  same  time  most  of  the  older  in- 
flections had  disappeared,  except  in  the  South,  and 
French  endings  and  French  prefixes  began  to  be  also 
used,  till  at  last  Oliphant  can  say  that  almost  **  every 
one  of  the  Teutonic  changes  of  idiom,  distinguishing 
the  old  English  from  the  new,  the  speech  of  Queen 
Victoria  from  that  of  Hengest,  are  to  be  found,  in  1303, 
in  Robert  of  Brunne's  work,  and  a  third  of  his  nouns, 
verbs,  and  adverbs  are  French."  In  him  then  the 
new  English  arose  into  clear  form.  But  it  was  not  as 
yet  a  standard  English :  it  was  still  in  Robert;'?  work 
4 


36  ENGLISH  LITERATURE,  [chap. 

a  dialect,  the  East-Midland  dialect.  Of  the  three 
dialects  the  Northern  and  Southern  alone  existed 
before  the  Conquest;  but  the  literary  English,  which 
we  may  call  Anglo-Saxon,  was  distinct  from  both,  and 
we  have  said  that  it  all  but  perished  after  the  Con- 
quest. Another  dialect  then  grew  up  in  the  Midland 
shires — in  East  Anglia,  and  to  the  west  of  the  Pennine 
chain.  It  was  the  Midland  dialect,  and  spoken  over 
the  largest  tract,  was  divided  into  West  and  East  Mid- 
land. The  East  Midland  became  the  language  of  litera- 
ture, the  standard  English.  Becoming,  "  in  cloisters  on 
the  Nen  and  the  Welland,"  the  fullest  receiver  of  the 
Erench  words,  and  the  largest  accepter  of  the  changes, 
and  especially  in  Robert  of  Brunne's  work,  it  took  hold 
of  Cambridge,  and  then  of  Oxford,  and  spoken  and 
written  in  these  two  centres  of  learning,  crept  down, 
conquering,  to  the  South,  and  finally  seized  on  London.^ 
It  did  not  overthrow  the  dialects,  for  the  Visio7i  of 
Piers  the  Plowman  and  Wiclif's  translation  of  the 
Bible  are  both  in  a  dialect,  but  it  became  the  standard 
English,  the  language  in  which  all  future  English 
literature  was  to  be  written  It  was  fixed  into  clear 
form  by  Chaucer  and  Gower.  It  was  the  language 
talked  at  the  court  and  in  the  court  society  to  which 
these  poets  belonged.  It  was  the  King's  English,  and 
the  fact  that  it  was  the  tongue  of  the  best  and  most 
cultivated  society,  as  well  as  the  great  excellence  of  the 
works  written  in  it  by  these  poets,  made  it  at  once 
the  tongue  of  literature. 

28.  Keligious  Literature  in  Langland  and 
Wiclif. — We  have  traced  the  work  of  **  transition  1 
English,"  as  it  has  been  called,  along  the  lines  of 
popular  religion  and  story-telling.  The  first  of  these, 
in  the  realm  of  poetry,  reaches  its  goal  in  the  work  of 
William  Langland  ;  in  the  realm  of  prose  it  reaches  its 
goal   in    Wiclif.       In   both   these   writers,   the   work 

1  See  for  all  this  Oliphant's  Standard  Englisky  an  admirable 
laook. 


II.]       FROM  THE  CONQUEST  TO  CHAUCER.         37 

differs  from  any  that  went  before  it,  by  its  extraordinary 
power,  and  by  the  depth  of  its  religious  feeling.  It  is 
plain  that  it  represented  a  society  much  more  strongly 
moved  by  religion  than  that  of  the  beginning  of  the 
fourteenth  century.  In  Wiclif,  the  voice  comes  from 
the  university,  and  it  went  all  over  the  land  in  the 
body  of  preachers  whom,  like  Wesley,  he  sent  forth. 
In  Langland's  Vision  we  have  a  voice  from  the  centre 
of  the  people  themselves  ;  his  poem  is  written  in  a 
style  made  uncouth  by  the  necessities  of  its  alliterative 
English  verse,  and  in  the  old  English  manner.  The 
very  plough  boy  could  understand  it.  It  became  the 
book  of  those  who  desired  social  and  Church  reform. 
It  was  as  eagerly  read  by  the  free  labourers  and 
fugitive  serfs  who  collected  round  John  Ball  and  Wat 
Tyler. 

29.  Causes  of  the  Religious  Revival. — It  was 
originally  due  to  the  prjachmg  of  the  Friars  m  the 
thirteenth  century,  and  to  the  noble  example  they  set 
of  devotion  to  tiie  poor.  When  the  Friars  however 
became  rich,  though  pretending  to  be  poor,  and 
impure  of  life,  though  pretending  to  goodness,  the 
religious  feeling  they  had  stirred  turned  against  them- 
selves, and  its  two  strongest  cries,  both  on  the 
Continent  and  in  England,  were  for  Truth,  and  for 
Purity,  in  private  life,  m  State  and  Church. 

Another  cause  common  to  the  Continent  and  to 
England  in  this  century  was  the  movement  for  the 
equal  rights  of  man  against  the  class  system  of  the 
middle  ages.  It  was  made  a  religious  movement 
when  men  said  that  they  were  equal  before  God, 
and  that  goodness  in  His  eyes  was  the  only 
nobility.  And  it  brought  with  it  a  religious  protest 
against  the  oppression  of  the  people  by  the  class  of 
the  nobles. 

There  were  two  other  causes,  however,  special  to 
England  at  this  time.  One  was  the  utter  misery  of 
the  people,  owing  to  the  French  wars.    Heavy  taxation 


38  ENGLISH  LITER  A  TURE.  [chap. 

fell  upon  them,  and  they  were  ground  down  by  severe 
laws,  which  prevented  them  bettering  themselves. 
They  felt  this  all  the  more  because  so  many  of  them 
had  bought  their  freedom,  and  began  to  feel  the 
deliglit  of  freedom.  It  was  then  that  in  their  misery 
they  turned  to  religion,  not  only  as  their  sole  refuge, 
but  as  supplying  them  with  reasons  for  a  social  revolu- 
tion. The  other  cause  was  the  Black  Death,  the 
Great  Plague  which,  in  1349,  '62,  and  '69,  swept 
over  England.  Grass  grew  in  the  towns;  whole 
villages  were  left  uninhabited ;  a  wild  panic  fell  upon 
the  people,  which  was  added  to  by  a  terrible  tempest 
in  1362  that  to  men's  minds  told  of  the  wrath  of 
God.  In  their  terror  then,  as  well  as  in  their  pain,  they 
fied  to  religion. 

30.  Piers  the  Plowman. — All  these  elements  are 
to  be  found  fully  represented  in  the  Vision  of  Piers 
the  Plowman.  Its  author,  William  Langland,  though 
we  are  not  certain  of  his  surname,  was  born,  about 
1332,  at  Cleobury  Mortimer,  in  Shropshire.  His 
Vision  begins  with  a  description  of  his  sleeping 
on  the  Malvern  Hills,  and  the  first  text  of  it  was 
probably  written  in  the  country  in  1362.  At  the 
accession  of  Richard  IL,  1377,  he  was  in  London. 
The  great  popularity  of  his  poem  made  him  in  that 
year,  and  again  in  the  year  1393,  send  forth  two  more 
texts  of  his  poem.  In  these  texts  he  added  to  the 
original  Vision  the  poems  of  Do  Wei,  Do  Bet,  and 
Do  Best.  In  1399,  he  wrote  at  Bristol  his  last  poem, 
the  Deposition  of  Richard  I  I. ,  and  then  died,  probably 
in  1400. 

He  paints  his  portrait  as  he  was  when  he  lived  in 
Cornhill,  a  tall,  gaunt  figure,  whom  men  called  Long 
Will ;  clothed  in  the  black  robes  in  which  he  sang  for 
a  few  pence  at  the  funerals  of  the  rich ;  hating  to  take 
his  cap  off  his  shaven  head  to  bow  to  the  lords  and 
ladies  that  rode  by  in  silver  and  furs  as  he  stalked  in 
observant   moodiness   along   the  Strand.     It  is  this 


II.]       FROM  THE  CONQUEST  TO  CHAUCER.  39 

figure,  which  in  indignant  sorrow  walks  through  the 
vvhole  poem. 

31.  His  Vision.— The  dream  of  the  "field  full  of 
folk,"  with  which  it  begins,  brings  together  nearly  as 
many  typical  characters  as  the  Tales  of  Chaucer  do. 
In  the  first  part,  the  Truth  sought  for  is  righteous  deal- 
ing in  Church,  and  Law,  and  State.  After  the  Prologue 
of  the  "  field  full  of  folk  "  and  in  it  the  Tower.of  Truth, 
and  the  Dungeon  where  the  Father  of  Falsehood 
lives,  the  Visio7i  treats  of  Holy  Church  who  tells  the 
dreamer  of  Truth.  Where  is  Falsehood  ?  he  asks.  She 
bids  him  turn,  and  he  sees  Falsehood,  and  Lady  Meed 
(or  Bribery),  and  learns  that  they  are  to  be  married. 
Theology  interferes,  and  all  the  parties  go  to  London 
before  the  King.  Lady  Meed  arraigned  on  False- 
hood's flight,  is  advised  by  the  King  to  marry  Con- 
science, but  Conscience  indignantly  proclaims  her 
faults,  and  prophesies  that  one  day  Reason  will  judge 
the  world.  On  this  the  King  sends  for  Reason,  who, 
deciding  a  question  against  Wrong  and  in  spite  of 
Bribery,  is  begged  by  the  King  to  remain  with  him. 
This  fills  four  divisions  or  "  Passus.'^  The  fifth  Passus 
contains  the  Vision  of  the  Seven  Deadly  Sins,  and  is 
full  of  vivid  pictures  of  friars,  robbers,  nuns,  of  village 
life,  of  London  alehouses,  of  all  the  vices  of  the 
time.  It  ends  with  the  search  for  Truth  being  taken 
up  by  all  the  penitents,  and  then  for  the  first  time  Piers 
the  Plowman  appears  and  describes  the  way.  He  sets 
all  who  come  to  him  to  hard  work,  and  it  is  here  that 
the  passages  occur  in  which  the  labouring  poor  and 
their  evils  are  dwelt  upon.  The  seventh  Passus  intro- 
duces the  bull  of  pardon  sent  by  Truth  (God  the  Father) 
to  Piers.  A  Priest  declares  it  is  not  valid,  and  the 
discussion  between  him  and  Piers  is  so  hot  that  the 
Dreamer  awakes  and  ends  with  a  fine  outburst  on  the 
wretchedness  of  a  trust  in  indulgences  and  the  noble- 
ness of  a  righteous  life.     This  is  the  original  poem. 

In  the  second  part  the  truth  sought  for  is  that  of' 


40  ENGLISH  LITER  A  TURE.  [chap. 

righteous  life,  to  Do  Well,  to  Do  Better,  to  Do  Best, 
the  three  titles  of  the  poems  added  afterwards.  In  a 
series  of  dreams  and  a  highly-wrought  allegory,  Do 
Well,  Do  Bet,  and  Do  Best,  are  finally  identified  with 
Jesus  Christ,  who  now  appears  as  Love  in  the  dress  of 
Piers  the  Plowman.  Do  Well  is  full  of  curious  and . 
important  passages.  Do  Bet  points  out  Christ  as  the 
Saviour  of  the  World,  describes  His  death,  resurrec- 
tion and  victory  over  Death  and  Sin.  And  the 
dreamer  wakes  in  a  transport  of  joy,  with  the  Easter 
chimes  pealing  in  his  ears.  But  as  Langland  looked 
round  on  the  world,  the  victory  did  not  seem  real, 
and  the  stern  dreamer  passed  out  of  triumph  into 
the  dark  sorrow  in  which  he  lived.  He  dreams 
again  in  Do  Best,  and  sees,  as  Christ  leaves  the  earth, 
the  reign  of  Antichrist.  Evils  attack  the  Church  and 
mankind.  Envy,  Pride,  and  Sloth,  helped  by  the 
Friars,  besiege  Conscience.  Conscience  cries  on 
Contrition  to  help  him,  but  Contrition  is  asleep,  and 
Conscience,  all  but  despairing,  grasps  his  pilgrim  staff 
and  sets  out  to  wander  over  the  world,  praying  for 
hick  and  health,  "till  he  have  Piers  the  Plowman," 
till  he  find  the  Saviour.  And  then  the  dreamer 
wakes  for  the  last  time,  weeping  bitterly. 

This  is  the  poem  which  wrought  so  strongly  in 
men's  minds  that  its  influence  was  almost  as  widely 
spread  as  Wiclif  s  in  the  revolt  which  had  now  begun 
against  Latin  Christianity.  Its  fame  was  so  great,  that  it 
produced  imitators.  About  1394,  another  aUiterative 
poem  was  set  forth  by  an  unknown  author,  with  the 
title  of  Fierce  the  Ploumia7i' s  Crede;  and  the  Ploivman's 
Tale,  wrongly  attributed  to  Chaucer,  is  another  witness 
to  the  popularity  of  Langland. 

32.  Wiclif. — At  the  same  time  as  the  Vision  was 
being  read  all  over  England,  John  Wiclif,  about  1380, 
began  his  work  in  the  English  tongue  with  a  nearly 
complete  Trafislation  of  the  Bible,  It  was  a  book  which 
bad  as  much  influence  in  fixing  our  language  as  the 


II.]       FROM  THE  CONQUEST  TO  CHAUCER.         41 

work  of  Chaucer.  But  he  did  much  more  than  this  for 
our  tongue.  He  made  it  the  popular  language  of  re- 
ligious thought  and  feeling.  In  1381  he  was  in  full 
battle  with  the  Church  on  the  doctrine  of  transub- 
Stantiation,  and  was  condemned  to  silence.  He  replied 
by  appealing  to  the  whole  of  England  in  the  speech  of 
the  people.  He  sent  forth  tract  after  tract,  sermon 
after  sermon,  couched  not  in  the  dry,  philosophic 
style  of  the  schoolmen,  but  in  short,  sharp,  stinging 
sentences,  full  of  the  homely  words  used  in  his  own 
Bible,  denying  one  by  one  almost  all  the  doctrines, 
and  denouncing  the  practices,  of  the  Church  of  Rome. 
He  was  our  first  Protestant.  It  was  a  new  literary 
vein  to  open,  the  vein  of  the  pamphleteer.  With  his 
work  then,  and  with  Langland's,  we  bring  up  to  the  year 
1400  the  Enghsh  prose  and  poetry  pertaining  to  re- 
ligion, the  course  of  which  we  have  been  tracing  since 
the  Conquest. 

33.  Story-telling  is  the  other  line  on  which  we 
have  placed  our  literature,  and  it  is  represented  first 
by  John  Gower.  He  belongs  to  a  school  older  than 
Chaucer,  inasmuch  as  he  is  scarcely  touched  by  the 
Italian,  but  chiefly  by  the  French  influence.  Yxixy  Balades 
prove  with  what  grace  he  could  write  when  a  young 
man  in  the  French  tongue  about  the  aftairs  of  love. 
As  he  grew  older  he  grew  graver,  and  partly  as  the 
religious  and  social  reformer,  and  partly  as  the  story- 
teller, he  fills  up  the  literary  transition  between  Langland 
and  Chaucer.  In  the  church  of  St.  Saviour,  at  South- 
wark,  his  head  is  still  seen  resting  on  his  three  great 
works,  the  Speculum  Meditantis^  the  Vox  Clamajitts, 
the  Confessio  Amantis,  1393.  It  marks  the  unsettled 
state  of  our  literary  language,  that  each  of  these  was 
written  in  a  different  tongue,  the  first  in  French,  the 
second  in  Latin,  the  third  in  English. 

The  third,  his  English  work,  is  a  dialogue  between 
a  lover  and  his  confessor  a  priest  of  Venus,  and  in  its 
course,  and  with   an   imitation    of  Jean  de  Meun's^ 


42  ENGLISH  LITER  A  TURE.  [chap. 

part  of  the  Ro7na7i  de  la  Rose,  all  the  passions  and 
studies  which  may  hinder  love  are  dwelt  upon,  partly 
in  allegory,  and  their  operation  illustrated  by  apposite 
stories,  borrowed  from  the  Gesta  Romano)  um  and 
from  the  Romances.  The  tales  are  wearisome,  and 
the  smoothness  of  the  verse  makes  them  more  weari- 
some. But  Govver  was  a  careful  writer  of  English ; 
and  in  his  satire  of  evils,  and  in  his  grave  reproof  of 
the  follies  of  Richard  II.,  he  rises  into  his  best  strain. 
The  king  himself,  even  though  reproved,  was  a  patron 
of  the  poet.  It  was  as  Gower  was  rowing  on  the 
Thames  that  the  royal  barge  drew  near,  and  he  was 
called  to  the  king's  side.  *'Book  some  new  thing," 
said  the  king,  "  in  the  way  you  are  used,  into  which 
book  I  myself  may  often  look  ;  "  and  the  request  was 
the  origin  of  the  Coiifessioji  of  a  Lover.  It  is  with 
pleasure  that  we  turn  from  the  learned  man  of  talent 
to  Geoffrey  Chaucer — to  the  genius  who  called  Gower, 
with  perhaps  some  of  the  irony  of  an  artist,  "  the  moral 
Gower." 

34.  Chaucer's  French  Period. — Geoffrey 
Chaucer  was  the  son  of  a  vintner,  of  Thames  Street, 
London,  and  was  born,  it  is  now  believed,  in  1340.  He 
lived  almost  all  his  life  in  London,  in  the  centre  of  its 
work  and  society.  When  he  was  sixteen  he  became 
page  to  the  wife  of  Lionel,  Duke  of  Clarence,  and  con- 
tinued at  the  Court  till  he  joined  the  army  in  France 
in  1359.  He  was  taken  prisoner,  but  ransomed  be- 
fore the  treaty  of  Bretigny,  in  1360.  We  then  know 
nothing  of  his  life  for  six  years ;  but  from  items  in 
the  Exchequer  Rolls,  we  find  that  he  was  again 
connected  with  the  Court,  from  1366  to  1372.  It 
was  during  this  time  that  he  began  to  write.  His  first 
poem  may  have  been  the  A,  B,  C,  a  prayer  Englished 
from  the  French  at  the  request  of  the  Duchess  Blanche. 
The  translation  of  the  Romaunt  of  the  Rose  has  been 
attributed  to  him,  but  the  best  critics  are  doubtful 
of,  or  deny,  his  authorship.     They  are  only  sure  of 


II.]        FROM  THE  CONQUEST  TO  CHAUCER.  43 

two  poems,  the  Compleynte  to  Pity  in  1368,  and  in  the 
next  year  the  Dei  he  of  Blaiinche  the  Diichesse^  whose 
husband,  John  of  Gaunt,  was  Chaucer's  patron.  These, 
being  written  under  the  influence  of  French  poetry, 
are  classed  under  the  name  of  Chaucer's  first  period. 
There  are  hues  m  them  which  seem  to  speak  of  a 
luckless  love  affair,  and  in  this  broken  love  it  has  been 
supposed  we  find  the  key  to  Chaucer's  early  life. 

35.  Chaucer's  Italian  Period. — Chaucer's 
second  poetic  period  may  be  called  the  period  of 
Italian  influence,  from  1372  to  1384.  During  these 
years  he  went  for  the  king  on  no  less  than  seven 
diplomatic  missions.  Three  of  these,  in  1372,  '74, 
and  '78,  were  to  Italy.  At  that  time  the  great  Italian 
literature  which  inspired  then,  and  still  inspires, 
European  literature,  had  reached  full  growth,  and  it 
opened  to  Chaucer  a  new  world  of  art.  His  many 
quotations  from  Dante  show  that  he  had  read  the 
Divina  Comjnedia,  and  we  may  well  think  that  he  then 
first  learnt  the  full  power  and  range  of  poetry.  He 
read  the  Sonnets  of  Petrarca,  and  he  learnt  what 
is  meant  by  ^*  form"  in  poetry.  He  read  the  tales 
and  poems  of  Boccaccio,  who  made  Italian  prose,  and 
in  them  he  first  saw  how  to  tell  a  story  exquisitely. 
Petrarca  and  Boccaccio  he  may  even  have  met,  for 
they  died  in  1374  and  1375,  but  ne  never  saw  Dante, 
who  died  at  Ravenna  in  132 1.  When  he  came  back 
from  these  journeys  he  was  a  new  man.  He  threw 
aside  the  romantic  poetry  of  France,  and  laughed  at 
it  in  his  gay  and  kindly  manner  in  the  Rime  of  Sir 
Thopas,  afterwards  made  one  of  the  Canterbury  Tales, 
His  chief  work  of  this  time  bears  witness  to  the  influ- 
ence of  Italy.  It  was  Troylus  and  Creseide,  1382  (?), 
a  translation,  with  many  changes  and  additions,  of  the 
Filostrato  of  Boccaccio.  The  additions  (and  he 
nearly  doubled  the  poem)  are  stamped  with  his  own 
peculiar  tenderness,  vividness,  and  simplicity.  His 
changes  from  the  original  are  all  towards  the  side  of 


44  ENGLISH  LITER  A  TURE.  [chap. 

purity,  good  taste,  and  piety.  We  meet  the  further 
influence  of  Boccaccio  in  the  birth  of  some  of  the 
Canterbury  Tales,  and  of  Petrarca  in  the  Tales  them- 
selves. To  this  time  is  now  referred  the  tales  of  the 
Second  Nun,  the  Monk,  the  Doctor,  the  Man  of  Law, 
the  Clerk,  the  Prioress,  the  Squire,  the  Franklin,  Sir 
Thopas,  and  the  first  draft  of  the  Knight's  Tale, 
borrowed,  with  much  freedom,  from  the  Teseidt  of 
Boccaccio.  The  other  poems  of  this  period  were  the 
Compleynt  of  Mars,  Anelida  a?id  A  rate,  Bocce,  the 
Former  Age,  and  the  Parlament  of  Foides,  all  between 
1374  and  1382,  \\i^  Lines  to  Adam  Scrivener,  1383,  and 
the  Hous  of  Fame,  1384  (?).  In  the  passion  with 
which  Chaucer  describes  the  ruined  love  of  Troilus 
and  Anelida,  some  have  traced  the  lingering  sorrow 
of  his  early  love  affair.  But  if  this  be  true,  it  was 
now  passing  away,  for  in  the  creation  of  Pandarus  in 
the  Troilus,  and  in  the  delightful  fun  of  the  Parlament 
of  Foules,  a  new  Chaucer  appears,  the  humorous  poet  of 
some  of  the  Canterbury  7 ales.  In  the  active  business 
life  he  led  during  this  period  he  was  likely  to  grow 
out  of  mere  sentiment,  for  he  was  not  only  employed 
on  service  abroad,  but  also  at  home.  In  1374  he 
was  Comptroller  of  the  Wool  Customs,  in  1382  of 
the  Petty  Customs,  and  in  1386  Member  of  Par- 
liament for  Kent. 

36.  Chaucer's  English  Period. — It  is  in  the 
next  period,  from  1384  to  1390,  that  he  left  behind 
(except  in  the  borrowing  of  his  subjects)  Italian  in- 
fluence as  he  had  left  French,  and  became  entirely 
himself,  entirely  English.  The  comparative  poverty 
in  which  he  now  lived,  and  the  loss  of  his  offices, 
for  in  John  of  Gaunt's  absence  court  favour  was 
withdrawn  from  him,  may  have  given  him  more 
time  for  study  and  the  retired  life  of  a  poet.  At 
least  in  his  Legende  of  Good  Wotnen,  the  prologue  to 
which  was  written  in  1385,  we  find  him  a  closer 
student   than   ever   of    books   and  of   nature.     His 


11  ]        FROM  THE  CONQUEST  TO  CHAUCER.         45 

appointment  as  Clerk  of  the  Works  in  1389  brought 
him  again  into  contact  with  men.  He  supenntended 
the  repairs  and  building  at  the  Palace  of  Westminster, 
the  Tower,  and  St.  George's  Chapel,  Windsor,  till 
July,  1 39 1,  when  he  was  superseded,  and  lived  on 
pensions  allotted  to  him  by  Richard,  and  by  Henry  IV., 
after  he  had  sent  that  king  in  1399  his  Compleint  to 
his  Purse,  Before  1390,  however,  he  had  added  to 
his  great  work  its  most  English  tales;  the  Miller,  the 
Reeve,  the  Cook,  the  Wife  of  Bath,  the  Merchant, 
the  Friar,  the  Nun,  Priest,  Pardoner,  and  perhaps  the 
Sompnour.  The  Prologue  was  probably  written  in 
1388.  In  these,  in  their  humour,  in  their  vividness  of 
portraiture,  in  their  ease  of  narration,  and  in  the  variety 
of  their  characters,  Chaucer  shines  supreme.  A  few 
smaller  poems  belong  to  this  time,  such  as  Truth  and 
the  Moder  of  God, 

Daring  the  last  ten  years  of  his  life,  which  may  be 
called  the  period  of  his  decay,  he  wrote  some  small 
poems,  and  along  with  the  Compleynte  of  Veiius^  and  a 
prose  treatise  on  the  Astrolabe,  three  more  Canterbury 
tales,  the  Canon's-yeoman's,  Manciple's,  and  Parsone's. 
The  last  was  written  the  year  of  his  death,  1400. 
Having  done  this  work  he  died  in  a  house  under  the 
shadow  of  the  Abbey  of  Westminster.  Within  the 
walls  of  the  Abbey  Church,  the  first  of  the  poets  who 
lies  there,  that  "  sacred  and  happy  spirit  '^  sleeps. 

37.  Chaucer's  Character. — Born  of  the  trades- 
man class,  Chaucer  was  in  every  sense  of  the  word 
one  of  our  finest  gentlemen :  tender,  graceful  in 
thought,  glad  of  heart,  humorous,  and  satirical 
without  unkindness ;  sensitive  to  every  change  of 
feeling  in  himself  and  others,  and  therefore  full  of 
sympathy ;  brave  in  misfortune,  even  to  mirth,  and 
doing  well  and  with  careful  honesty  all  he  undertook. 
His  first  and  great  delight  was  in  human  nature,  and 
he  makes  us  love  the  noble  characters  in  his  poems, 
and  feel  with  kindliness  towards  the  baser  and  ruder 


46  ENGLISH  LITERATURE.  [chap. 

sort  He  never  sneers,  for  he  had  a  wide  charity,  and 
we  can  always  smile  in  his  pages  at  the  follies  and  for- 
give the  sins  of  men.  He  had  a  true  and  chivalrous 
regard  for  women  of  his  own  class,  and  his  wife  and  he 
ought  to  have  been  very  happy  if  they  had  fulfilled  the 
ideal  he  had  of  marriage.^  He  lived  in  aristocratic 
society,  and  yet  he  thought  him  the  greatest  gentleman 
who  was  '*  most  vertuous  alway,  prive,  and  pert  (open), 
and  most  entendeth  aye  to  do  the  gentil  dedes  that  he 
can."  He  lived  frankly  among  men,  and  as  we  have 
seen,  saw  many  different  types  of  men,  and  in  his 
own  time  filled  many  parts  as  a  man  of  the  world  and 
of  business.  Yet,  with  all  this  active  and  observant 
life,  he  was  commonly  very  quiet  and  kept  much  to 
himself.  The  Host  in  the  Tales  japes  at  him  for  his 
lonely,  abstracted  air.  "  Thou  lookest  as  thou  wouldesf 
find  a  hare.  And  ever  on  the  ground  I  see  thee  stare.' ' 
Being  a  good  scholar,  he  read  morning  and  night  alone, 
and  he  says  that  after  his  (office)  work  he  would  go 
home  and  sit  at  another  book  as  dumb  as  a  stone,  till 
his  look  was  dazed.  While  at  study  and  when  he  was 
making  of  songs  and  ditties,  **  nothing  else  that  God 
had  made  "  had  any  interest  for  him.  There  was  but 
one  thing  that  roused  him  then,  and  that  too  he  liked 
to  enjoy  alone.  It  was  the  beauty  of  the  morning  and 
the  fields,  the  woods,  and  streams,  and  flowers,  and 
the  singing  of  the  little  birds.  This  made  his  heart 
full  of  revel  and  solace,  and  when  spring  came  after 
winter,  he  rose  with  the  lark  and  cried,  **  Farewell,  my 
book  and  my  devotion."  He  was  the  first  who  made 
the  love  of  nature  a  distinct  element  in  our  poetry. 
He  was  the  first  who,  in  spending  the  whole  day 
gazing  alone  on  the  daisy,  set  going  that  lonely  delight 
in  natural  scenery  which  is  so  special  a  mark  of  our 
later  poets.     He  lived  thus  a  double  life,  in  and  out 

^  If  we  may  judg-e  from  the  poems — see  especially  his  marriage 
Poem  to  Bukton — he  was  even  more  mihappy  than  Shakspere  in 
his  married  life. 


II.]        FROM  THE  CONQUEST  TO  CHAUCER,  a^I 

of  the  world,  but  never  a  gloomy  one.  For  he  was 
fond  of  mirth  and  good-living,  and  when  he  grew 
towards  age,  was  portly  of  waist,  '-'no  poppet  to 
embrace/'  But  he  kept  to  the  end  his  elfish  coun- 
tenance, the  shy,  delicate,  half  mischievous  face  which 
looked  on  men  from  its  grey  hair  and  forked  beard, 
and  was  set  off  by  his  dark-coloured  dress  and  hood. 
A  knife  and  inkhorn  hung  on  his  dress;  we  see  a 
rosary  in  his  hand ;  and  when  he  w^as  alone  he  walked 
swiftly. 

1%,  The  Canterbury  Tales. — Of  his  work  it  is 
not  easy  to  speak  briefly,  because  of  its  great 
variety.  Enough  has  been  said  of  it,  with  the  ex- 
ception of  his  most  complete  creation,  the  Can- 
terbu7'y  Tales,  It  will  be  seen  from  the  dates  given 
above  that  they  were  not  written  at  one  time. 
They  are  not,  and  cannot  be  looked  on  as  a  whole. 
Many  were  written  independently,  and  then  fitted 
into  the  framework  of  the  Prologue  in  1388.  At 
that  time  a  number  more  were  written,  and  the 
rest  added  at  intervals  till  his  death.  In  fact,  the 
whole  thing  was  done  much  in  the  same  way  as  Mr. 
Tennyson  has  written  his  Idylls  of  the  King,  The 
manner  in  which  he  knitted  them  together  was  very 
simple,  and  likely  to  please  the  English  people.  The 
holiday  excursions  of  the  time  were  the  pilgrimages, 
and  the  most  famous  and  the  plcasantest  pilgrimage 
to  go,  especially  for  Londoners,  was  the  three  or  four 
days'  journey  to  see  the  shrine  of  St.  Thomas  at 
Canterbury.  Persons  of  all  ranks  in  life  met  and 
travelled  together,  starting  from  a  London  inn. 
Chaucer  seized  on  this  as  the  frame  in  which  to  set 
his  pictures  of  life.  He  grouped  aiound  the  jovial 
hosl  of  the  Tab:ird  Inn  men  and  women  of  every 
class  of  society  in  England,  set  them  on  horseback 
to  ride  to  Can  erbury,  and  made  each  of  them  tell  a 
tale.  No  one  could  hit  off  a  character  better,  and  in 
his  Prologue,  and  in  the  prologues  to  the  several  Tales, 
6 


48  ENGLISH  LITER  A  TURE.  [-hap. 

the  whole  of  the  new,  vigorous  English  society  which 
had  grown  up  since  Edward  I.  is  painted  with  as- 
tonishing vividness.  "  I  see  all  the  pilgrims  in  the 
Canterbury  Tales,"  says  Dryden,  "their humours,  their 
features,  and  the  very  dress,  as  distinctly  as  if  I  had 
supped  with  them  at  the  Tabard  in  Southwark." 
The  Tales  themselves  take  in  the  whole  range  of  the 
poetry  of  the  middle  ages ;  the  legend  of  the  saint, 
the  romance  of  the  Knight,  the  wonderful  fables  of 
the  traveller,  the  coarse  tale  of  common  life,  the 
love  story,  the  allegory,  the  satirical  lay,  and  the 
apologue.  And  they  are  pure  tales.  He  is  not  in 
any  sense  a  dramatic  writer ;  he  is  our  greatest  story- 
teller in  verse.  All  the  best  tales  are  told  easily, 
sincerely,  with  great  grace,  and  yet  with  so  much 
homeliness,  that  a  child  would  understand  them. 
Sometimes  his  humour  is  broad,  sometimes  sly, 
sometimes  gay,  sometimes  he  brings  tears  into  our 
eyes,  and  he  can  make  us  smile  or  be  sad  as  he 
pleases. 

He  had  a  very  fine  ear  for  the  music  of  verse,  and 
the  tale  and  the  ver^e  go  together  like  voice  and  music. 
Indeed,  so  softly  flowing  and  bright  are  thjy,  that  to 
read  them  is  like  listening  in  a  meadow  full  of  sun- 
shine to  a  clear  stream  rippling  over  its  bed  of 
pebbles.  The  English  in  which  they  are  written  is 
almost  the  English  of  our  tim.e  ;  and  it  is  literary 
EngUsh.  Chaucer  made  our  tongue  into  a  true  means 
of  poetry.  He  did  more,  he  welded  together  the 
French  and  English  elements  in  our  language  and 
made  them  into  one  English  tool  for  the  use  of 
literature,  and  all  our  prose  writers  and  poets  derive 
their  tongue  from  the  language  of  the  Canterbury 
Tales,  They  give  him  honour  for  this,  but  still  more 
for  that  he  was  th^  first  English  arrist.  Poetry  is  an 
art,  and  the  artist  in  poetry  is  one  who  writes  for  pure 
pleasure  and  for  nothing  else  the  thing  he  writes,  and 
who  desires  to  give  to  others  the  same  fine  pleasure  by 


II.]        FROM  THE  CONQUEST  TO  CHAUCER,  49 

his  poems  which  he  had  in  writing  them.  The  thing 
he  most  cares  about  is  that  the  form  in  which  he  puts 
his  thoughts  or  feeHngs  may  be  perfectly  fitting  to  the 
subject,  and  as  beautiful  as  possible — but  for  this  he 
cares  very  greatly  ;  and  in  this  Chaucer  stands  apart 
from  the  other  poets  of  his  time.  Gower  wrote  with 
a  set  object,  and  nothing  can  be  duller  than  the  form 
in  which  he  puts  his  tales.  The  author  of  Piers 
the  Plowman  wrote  with  the  object  of  reform  in  social 
and  ecclesiastical  affairs,  and  his  form  is  uncouth  and 
harsh.  Chaucer  wrote  because  he  was  full  of  emotion 
and  joy  in  his  own  thoughts,  and  thought  that  others 
would  weep  and  be  glad  with  him,  and  the  only  time 
he  ever  moralises  is  in  the  tales  of  the  Yeoman  and 
the  Manciple,  written  in  his  decay.  He  has,  then,  the 
best  right  to  the  poet's  name.  He  is  our  first  English 
artist. 

39.  Mandeville. —  I  have  already  noticed  the 
prose  of  Wiclif  under  the  religious  class  of  English 
work.  I  have  kept  Sir  John  Mandeville  for  this  place, 
because  he  belongs  to  light  literature.  He  is  called 
our  *'  first  writer  in  formed  EngHsh,"  and  his  English 
is  that  spoken  at  court  in  the  later  years  of  Edward  lU. 
Chaucer  himself  however  wrote  some  things,  and 
especially  one  of  his  Tales,  in  an  involved  prose,  and 
John  of  Trevisa  translated  into  English  prose,  1387, 
Higden's  Polychronicon,  Mandeville  wrote  his  Travels 
first  in  Latin,  then  in  French,  and  finally  put  them 
into  our  tongue  about  1356,  *'  that  every  man  of  the 
nation  might  understand  them."  His  quaint  delight 
in  telling  his  "traveller's  tales,"  and  sometimes  the 
grace  with  which  he  tells  them,  rank  him  among  the 
story-tellers  of  England.  What  he  himself  saw  he 
describes  accurately,  and  he  saw  a  great  part  of  the 
world.  Thirty-four  years  he  wandered,  even  to  the 
Tartars  of  Cathay,  and  then,  unwearied,  wrote  his 
book  at  home. 


50  ENGLISH  UTERA  TURE.  [chap. 

CHAPTER  HI. 

FROM   CHAUCER,    1400,   TO   ELIZABETH,    1559. 

Thomas  Hoccleve  (Henry  V.'s  reign) ;  J.  Lydgate,  Falls  of  Princes 
(in  Henry  VI. ).  -  Sir  John  Fortescue's  prose  work,  and  Sir  T. 
Malory's  Morte  (T Arthur  (Edward  IV.). — Caxton  prints  at 
Westrninster,  1477-— Paston  Letters,  1422— 1505.— Hawes' 
Pqstitne  of  Pleasure,  1506. — John  Skehon's  poems,  1508 — 
1529. -Sir  T.  More's  History  of  Richard  III,  1513.— 
Tyndale's  Translation  of  the  Bible,  1525- —  Engl  sh  Prayer 
Book,  1549. — Ascham's  Toxophilus,  1545. — Poems  of 
Wyatt  and  Surrey,  in  TotteVs  Miscellany,  1557- 

ScoT'j'iSH  Poetry,  begins  with  Barbour's  Bruce,  1375 — 7  ; 
James  I.'s  Kings  Quhair,  1424. — T.  Henryson  dies,  1508. 
— Dunbar's  1  histle  and  Rose,  15 C 3. — Gawin  I'ouglas  dies, 
1522  —Sir  D.  Lyndsay  born,  1490  ;  Satire  of  Ihree 
Estates,  1535;  dies  1565. 

40.  The  Fifteenth  Century  Poetry.— The 
last  poems  of  Chaucer  and  Langland  bring  our  story 
up  to  1400.  The  hundred  years  that  followed  is  the 
most  barren  in  our  Hterature.  The  influence  of 
Chaucer  lasted,  and  of  the  poems  attributed  to  him, 
but  now  rejected  by  scholars,  some  certainly  belong 
to  the  first  half  of  this  century.  The  Court  of  Love, 
The  Cuckoo  a/id  the  JS/ightingale^  The  Flower  and  the 
Leaf  the  Complaint  of  the  Black  Knight,  stated  by 
Shirley,  Chaucer's  contemporary,  to  be  Lydgate's, 
Chaucer's  Dream,  A  Goodly  Ballad  of  Chaucer,  A 
Praise  of  Women,  Leaulte  vault  Richesse,  Proverhes  oj 
Chaucer}  the  last  two  stanzas  of  which  are  a  separate 
poem  attributed  by  Shirley  to  "  Halsam,  squiere," 
the  Roundel,  the  Virelai,  and  Chaucei'^s  Prophecy,  are 
with  the  Romaunt  of  the  Rose  (which  I  cannot  sur- 
render), held  by  Mr.  Bradshaw  not  to  be  Chaucer's. 
They  will  be  found  in  the  editions  of  Chaucer,  and 
^  Morris's  Chaucer,  vi.  303. 


III.]  FROM  CHAUCER  TO  ELIZABETH.  51 

some  of  them,  especially  The  Flo7ver  and  the  £ea/3,nd 
The  Cuckoo  a?id  the  Nightingale^  prove  that  there  were 
poets  who  could,  during  this  century,  not  only  imitate 
the  style,  but  also  drink  of  the  spirit  of  Chaucer. 

41.  Thomas  Hoccleve,  a  bad  versifier  of  the 
reign  of  Henry  V.,  loved  Chaucer  well.  ^*  With  his  loss 
the  whole  land  smartith,"  he  said ;  and  in  the  MS.  of  his 
longest  poem,  the  GoTernail  of  Princes^  written  before 
14x3,  he  caused  to  be  drawn,  with  fond  idolatry,  the 
portrait  of  his  "  master  dear  and  father  reverent,"  who 
had  enlumined  all  the  land  with  his  books. 

42.  John  Lydgate  was  a  more  worthy  follower 
of  Chaucer.  A  monk  of  Bury,  and  thirty  years  of  age 
when  Chaucer  died,  he  yet  wrote  nothing  of  much 
importance  till  the  reign  of  Henry  VI.  He  was  a 
gay  and  pleasant  person,  though  a  long-winded  poet, 
and  he  seems  to  have  Hved  even  in  his  old  age,  when 
he  recalls  himself  as  a  boy  *'  weeping  for  naught, 
anon  after  glad,"  the  fresh  and  natural  life  of  one  who 
enjoyed  everything;  but,  like  many  gay  persons, 
he  had  a  vein  of  melancholy,  and  some  of  his  best 
work,  at  least  in  the  poet  Gray's  opinion,  belongs 
to  the  realms  of  pathetic  and  moral  poetry.  But 
there  was  scarcely  any  literary  work  he  could  not 
do.  He  rimed  history,  ballads,  and  legends,  till  the 
monastery  was  delighted.  He  made  pageants  for 
Henry  VI.,  masks  and  May-games  for  aldermen, 
mummeries  for  the  Lord  Mayor,  and  satirical  ballads 
on  the  follies  of  the  day.  Educated  at  Oxford,  a 
traveller  in  France  and  Italy,  he  knew  the  literature  of 
his  time,  and  he  even  dabbled  in  the  sciences.  He 
was  as  much  a  lover  of  nature  as  Chaucer,  but  cannot 
make  us  feel  the  beauty  of  nature  in  the  same  way. 
It  is  his  story-telling  which  links  him  closest  to  his 
master.  His  three  chief  poems  were  the  Falls  of 
Princes^  the  Sto?'ie  of  Thebes,  and  the  Troye  Hook. 
The  first  is  a  translation  of  a  French  version  of 
Boccaccio's  De  Casibus   Virorum  et  Feminarum  Illus- 


52  ENGLISH  LITERATURE  [chap. 

friuvi.  It  tells  the  tragic  fates  of  great  men  and 
women  from  the  time  of  Adam  to  the  capture  of  King 
John  of  France  at  Poitiers.  The  plan  is  dramatic ; 
the  sorrowful  dead  appear  before  Boccaccio,  pensive 
in  his  library,  and  each  tells  of  his  downfall.  The 
Storie  of  Thebes  is  introduced  as  an  additional  Canter- 
bury Tale,  and  is  made  into  a  chivalric  romance. 
The  Troye  Book  is  a  version  from  the  French  of  Guido 
di  Colonna's  prose  romance.  A  hundred  years,  as 
we  shall  see,  did  not  exhaust  his  influence,  for  in  the 
Mirror  of  Magistrates,  eight  poets  united  to  write  a 
supplement  to  his  Falls  of  Princes. 

A  few  minor  poets  do  no  more  now  than  keep 
poetry  alive.  Another  version  of  tlie  Troy  Story  in 
Henry  VI. 's  time;  Hugh  de  Campeden's  Sidrac. 
Thomas  Chestre's  Lay  of  Sir  Launfal,  and  the  transla- 
tion of  the  Earl  of  Ibulouse,  prove  that  romances  were 
still  taken  from  the  French.  William  Lichfield's  Cojn- 
plaint  between  God  and  Man,  and  William  Nassington's 
Mirrour  of  Life,  carry  on  the  religious,  and  the  Tonr- 
na?nent  of  I'ottenham  the  satirical,  poetry.  John  Cap- 
grave's  translation  of  the  Life  of  St.  Catherine  i?,  less 
known  than  his  Chro?iicle  of  England  dedicated  to 
Edward  IV.  He,  with  John  Harding,  a  soldier  of 
Agincourt,  whose  riming  Chronicle  belongs  to  Edward 
IV. 's  reign,  continue  the  historical  poetry.  A  number  of 
obscure  versifiers,  Thomas  Norton,  and  George  Ripley 
who  wrote  on  alchemy,  and  Dame  JuUana  Berners' 
book  on  Hunting,  bring  us  to  the  reign  of  Henry  VIL, 
when  Skelton  first  began  to  write.  Meanwhile  poetry, 
which  had  decayed  in  England,  was  flourishing  in 
Scotland  (p.  62). 

43.  Ballads,  lays,  fragments  of  romances,  had 
been  sung  in  England  from  the  earliest  times,  and 
popular  tales  and  jokes  took  form  in  short  lyric  pieces, 
to  be  accompanied  with  music  and  dancing.  In  fact 
the  ballad  went  over  the  whole  land  among  the  people. 
The  trader,  the  apprentices,  and  poor  of  the  cities, 


III.]  FROM  CHAUCER  TO  ELIZABETH.  53 

the  peasantry,  had  their  own  songs.  They  tended  to 
collect  themselves  round  some  legendary  name  like 
Robin  Hood,  or  some  historical  character  made 
legendary,  like  Randolf,  Earl  of  Chester.  Sloth,  in 
Fiers  Plowmaii^s  Vision,  does  not  know  his  pater- 
noster, but  he  does  know  the  rimes  of  these  heroes. 
h.  crowd  of  minstrels  sang  them  through  city  and 
village.  The  very  friar  sang  them  "  and  made  his 
Englissch  swete  upon  his  tunge."  A  collection  of 
Robin  Hood  ballads  was  printed  under  the  title  A 
Geste  of  Robyn  Hode,  by  Chepman  and  Myllar  in  Edin- 
burgh, about  1506,  and  soon  after  as  A  Lytel  Geste 
of  Robin  Hood,  by  Wynken  de  Worde.  The  Nut  Brown 
Maid,  about  1 500-1502,  The  Battle  of  Otterburn, 
about  1460,  and  Chei^y  Chase,  after  1460,  belong  to 
the  end  of  1400  and  the  beginning  of  1500.  It  was 
not  however  till  much  later  that  any  collection  of  bal- 
lads was  made  ;  and  few,  in  the  form  we  possess  them, 
can  be  dated  farther  back  than  the  reign  of  Elizabeth. 
44.  Prose  Literature. — The  work  that  Mande- 
ville  had  begun  as  the  first  writer  of  new  English  prose, 
that  Chaucer,  and  Wiclif  assisted  by  Purvey  and  Here- 
ford, had  continued,  was  worthily  carried  on  in  the 
fifteenth  century  by  four  masters  of  English  prose, 
Pecock,  Mallory,  Fortescue,  and  Caxton.  The  re- 
ligious war  between  the  Lollards  and  the  Church  raged 
during  the  reigns  of  Henry  V.  and  Henry  VI.,  and 
in  the  time  of  the  latter  Reginald  Pecock  took  it 
out  of  Latin  into  homely  English.  He  fought  the  Lol- 
lards with  their  own  weapons,  with  public  sermons  in 
English,  and  with  tracts  in  English  ;  and  after  1449, 
when  Bishop  of  Chichester,  pubHshed  his  work,  The 
Repressor  of  overmuch  Blaining  of  the  Clei'gy.  It 
pleased  neither  party.  The  Lollards  disliked  it 
because  it  defended  the  customs  and  doctrines  of  the 
Church.  Churchmen  burnt  it  because  it  agreed  with 
the  *'  Bible-men,"  that  the  Bible  was  the  only  rule  of 
faith.     Both  abjured  it  because  it  said  that  doctrines 


54  ENGLISH  LITERATURE.  [chap. 

were  to  be  proved  from  the  Bible  by  reason.  Pecock 
is  the  first  of  all  the  Church  theologians  who  wrote  in 
English,  and  the  book  is  a  fine  example  of  our  early 
prose. 

Sir  John  Fortescue's  book  on  the  Differe7ice  be- 
tiveen  Absolute  and  Limited  Monarchy^  in  Edward  IV. 's 
rei^n,  is  less  fine  an  example  of  the  prose  of  English 
politics  than  Sir  Thomas  Malory's  Le  Morted' Arthur 
is  of  the  prose  of  chivalry.  This  book,  arranged  and 
modelled  into  an  epic  from  French  and  contem- 
porary English  materials,  is  the  work  of  a  man  of 
genius,  and  was  ended  in  the  ninth  year  of  Edward 
IV.,  fifteen  years  before  Caxton  had  finished  printmg 
it.  Its  prose,  in  its  staid  simplicity,  may  well  have 
charmed  Caxton,  who  printed  it  with  all  the  care  of 
one  who  *'  loved  the  noble  acts  of  chivalry."  Caxton's 
own  work  added  to  the  prose  of  England.  Born  of 
Kentish  parents,  he  went  to  the  Low  Countries  in 
1440,  and  learned  his  trade.  The  first  book  said  to 
have  been  printed  in  this  country  was  The  Game  and 
Playe  of  the  Chesse,  1474.  The  first  book  that  bears 
the  inscription,  ^'  Imprynted  by  me,  William  Caxton,  at 
Westmynstre,"  is  TheDides  and  Sayings  of  Philosophers. 
But  the  first  English  book  Caxton  made,  and  finished 
at  Cologne  in  147 1,  was  his  translation  of  the  Recuyell 
of  the  History es  of  Troy^  and  in  this  book,  and  in  his 
translation  of  Reynard  the  Fox  from  the  Dutch,  in  his 
translation  of  the  Golden  Legend^  and  his  re-editing  of 
Tre visa's  Chrojiicle^  in  which  he  **  changed  the  rude 
and  old  English,"  he  kept,  by  the  fixing  power  of  the 
press,  the  Midland  English  which  Chaucer  had  esta- 
blished as  the  tongue  of  literature,  from  further  degra- 
dation. Forty  years  later  Tyndale's  New  Testament 
fixed  it  for  ever  as  the  standard  English,  and  the 
EHzabethan  writers  kept  it  in  its  purity. 

45.  Influences  which  laid  the  Foundations 
of  the  Elizabethan  Literature. — The  first  of  these 
grew  out  of  Caxton's  work.  John  Shirley,  a  gentleman 


III.]  FkOM  CHAUCER  TO  ELIZABETH,  55 

of  good  family,  and  Chaucer's  contemporary,  who  died, 
a  very  old  man,  in  1449,  deserves  mention  as  a  trans- 
criber and  preserver  of  the  works  of  Chaucer  and  Lyd- 
gate,but  Caxton  fulfilled  the  task  Shirley  had  begun. 
He  printed  Chaucer  and  Lydgate  and  Gower  with  zea- 
lous care.  He  printed  the  Chronicle  of  the  Brut,  and 
Higden's  Polychronico7i ;  he  secured  for  us  the  Morte 
d' Arthur.  He  had  a  tradesman's  interest  in  publish- 
ing the  romances,  for  they  were  the  reading  of  the 
day ;  but  he  could  scarcely  have  done  better  for  the 
interests  of  the  coming  literature.  These  books 
nourished  the  imagination  of  England,  and  supplied 
poet  after  poet  with  fine  subjects  for  work,  or  fine 
frames  for  their  subjects.  He  had  not  a  tradesman's, 
but  a  loving  literary  interest  in  printing  the  old 
English  poets ;  and  in  sending  them  out  from  his  press 
Caxton  kept  up  th^  continuity  of  English  poetry. 
The  poets  after  him  at  once  began  on  the  models 
of  Chaucer  and  Gower  and  Lydgate  \  and  the  books 
themselves  being  more  widely  read,  not  only  made 
poets  but  a  public  that  loved  poetry.  The  imprinting 
of  old  English  poetry  was  one  of  the  sources  in  this 
century  of  the  Elizabethan  literature. 

The  second  source  was  the  growth  of  an  interest  in 
classic  literature.  All  through  the  last  two-thirds  of  this 
century,  though  so  little  creative  work  was  done,  the 
interest  in  that  literature  grew.  The  Wars  of  the  Roses 
did  not  stop  the  reading  of  books.  The  Paston  Letters, 
1422 — 1505,  the  correspondence  of  a  country  family 
from  Henry  VI.  to  Henry  VH.,  are  pleasantly,  even 
correctly  written,  and  contain  passages  which  refer  to 
translations  of  the  classics  and  to  manuscripts  sent  to 
and  fro  for  reading.  A  great  number  of  French  trans- 
lations of  the  Latin  classics  were  widely  read  in 
England.  Henry  VL,  Edward  IV.,  and  some  of  the 
great  nobles  were  lovers  of  books.  Men  like  Duke 
Humphrey  of  Gloucester  made  libraries  and  brought 
over  Italian  scholars  to  England  to  translate  Greek 


56  ENGLISH  LITER  A  TURE,  [chap. 

works.  There  were  fine  scholars  in  England,  like  John, 
Lord  Tiptoft,  Earl  of  Worcester,  who  had  won  fame  in 
the  schools  of  Italy,  and  whose  translations  of  Cicero's 
De  Amicitia  and  of  Caesar's  De  Bello  Galiico  prove, 
with  his  Latin  letters,  how  worthy  he  was  of  the  praise 
of  Padua  and  the  gratitude  of  Oxford.  He  added 
many  MSS.  to  the  library  of  Duke  Humphrey.  Many 
men,  like  Robert  Flemmyng,  Dean  of  Lincoln ;  John 
Gunthorpe,  Dean  of  Wells ;  William  Grey,  Bishop 
of  Ely;  John  Phreas,  Provost  of  Balliol,  William 
Sellynge,  Fellow  of  All  Souls,  studied  at  Ferrara 
under  Baptista  Guarini,  and  collected  MSS.  in  Italy 
of  the  classics,  with  which  they  enriched  the  libraries  of 
England.  There  was  therefore  in  England  a  swiftly- 
growing  interest  in  the  ancient  writers. 

46.  The  Influence  of  the  Italian  RevivaL — 
Such  an  interest  was  made  and  deepened  by  the  revival 
of  letters  which  arose  after  1453  in  Italy,  and  we  have 
seen  that  before  the  last  two  decades  of  the  fifteenth 
century  many  Englishmen  had  gone  to  Italy  to  read 
and  study  the  old  Greek  authors  on  whom  the  scholars 
driven  from  Constantinople  by  the  Turks  were  lecturing 
in  the  schools  of  Florence.  The  New  Learning  in- 
creased in  England,  and  passed  on  into  the  sixteenth 
century,  until  it  decayed  for  a  time  in  the  violence  of 
the  religious  struggle.  But  we  had  now  begun  to  do  our 
own  work  as  translators  of  the  classics,  and  the  young 
English  scholars  whom  the  Italian  revival  had  awakened 
filled  year  after  year  the  land  with  English  versions  of 
the  ancient  writers  of  Rome  and  Greece.  It  is  in  this 
growing  influence  of  the  great  classic  models  of  litera- 
ture that  we  find  the  gathering  together  of  another  of 
the  sources  of  that  great  Elizabethan  literature  which 
seems  to  arise  so  suddenly,  but  which  had,  in  reaUty, 
been  long  preparing. 

47.  Prose  under  Henry  VIII. — The  reigns  of 
Richard  HI.  and  of  Henry  VII.  brought  forth  no  prose 
of  any  worth,  but  the  country  awakened  from  its  dul- 


III.]  FROM  CHAUCER  TO  ELIZABETH.  57 

ness  with  the  accession  of  Henry  VIIL,  1509.  John 
Colet,  Dean  of  St.  Paul's,  with  William  Lilly,  the  gram- 
marian, set  on  foot  a  school  where  the  classics  were 
taught  in  a  new  and  practical  way,  and  between  the 
year  1500  and  the  Reformation  twenty  grammar-schools 
were  established.  Erasmus,  who  had  all  the  enthu- 
siasm which  sets  others  on  fire,  had  come  to  England 
in  1497,  and  found  Grocyn  and  Linacre  at  Oxford, 
teaching  the  Greek  they  had  learnt  from  Chalcondylas 
at  Florence.  He  learnt  Greek  from  them,  and  found 
eager  admiration  of  his  own  scholarship  in  Bishop 
Fisher,  Sir  Thomas  More,  Colet,  and  Archbishop 
Warham.  From  these  men  a  liberal  and  moderate 
theology  spread,  which  soon,  however,  perished  in  the 
heats  of  the  Reformation.  But  the  new  learning  they 
had  started  grew  rapidly,  assisted  by  the  munificence 
of  Wolsey  ;  and  Cambridge,  under  Cheke  and  Smith, 
excelled  even  Oxford  in  Greek  leaming.  The  study 
of  the  great  classics  set  free  the  minds  of  men,  stirred 
and  gave  life  to  letters,  and  woke  up  English  prose 
from  its  sleep.  Its  earliest  effort  was  its  best.  It  was 
in  15 13  (not  printed  till  1557)  that  Thomas  More 
wrote  our  first  history  in  English,  of  Edward  V.'s  life 
and  Richard  IH.'s  usurpation.  The  simplicity  of  his 
genius  showed  itself  in  the  style,  and  his  wit  in  the 
picturesque  method  and  the  dramatic  dialogue  that 
graced  the  book.  The  stately  historical  step  was 
laid  aside  by  More  in  the  tracts  of  nervous  English 
with  which  he  replied  to  Tyndale,  but  both  his  styles 
are  remarkable  for  their  purity.  Of  all  the  *'  strong 
words"  he  uses,  three  out  of  four  are  Teutonic.  More's 
most  famous  work,  the  Utopia^  15 16,  was  written  in 
Latin,  but  was  translated  afterwards,  in  155 1,  by  Ralph 
Robinson.  It  tells  us  more  of  the  curiosity  the  New 
Learning  had  awakened  in  Englishmen  concerning  all 
the  problems  of  life,  society,  government,  and  religion, 
than  any  other  book  of  the  time.  It  is  the  representative 
book  of  that  short  but  well-defined  period  which  we 


58  ENGLISH  LITERA  TURK,  [CHA?. 

may  call  English  Renaissance  before  the  Reformation, 
Much  of  the  progress  of  prose  was  due  to  the  patron- 
age of  the  young  king.  It  was  the  king  who  asked 
Lord  Berners  to  translate  Froissart,  a  book  which  in 
1523  made  a  landmark  in  our  tongue.  It  was  the 
king  who  supported  Sir  Thomas  Elyot  in  his  effort 
to  improve  education,  and  encouraged  him  to  write 
books  (1531-46)  in  the  vulgar  tongue  that  he  might 
please  his  countrymen.  It  was  the  king  who  made 
Leland,  our  first  English  writer  on  antiquarian  sub- 
jects, the  ^*  King's  Antiquary,''  1533.  It  was  the  king 
to  whom  Roger  Ascham  dedicated  his  first  work, 
and  who  sent  him  abroad  to  pursue  his  studies.  This 
book,  the  Toxophilus,  or  the  School  of  Shooting,  1545? 
was  written  for  the  pleasure  of  the  yeomen  and  gentle- 
men of  England  in  their  own  tongue.  Ascham  apolo- 
gises for  this,  and  the  apology  marks  the  state  of 
English  prose.  "  Everything  has  been  done  excel- 
lently well  in  Greek  and  Latin,  but  in  the  English 
tongue  so  meanly  that  no  man  can  do  worse."  But 
Ascham's  quamt  English  has  its  charm,  and  he  did  not 
know  that  the  very  rudeness  of  language  of  which  he 
complained  was  in  reality  laying  the  foundations  of 
an  English  more  Teutonic  and  less  Latin  than  the 
English  of  Chaucer. 

48.  Prose  and  the  Reformation. — The  bigotry 
and  the  avarice  and  the  violent  controversy  of  the 
Reformation  killed  for  a  time  the  New  Learning,  but  it 
did  a  vast  work  for  English  literature  in  its  translation 
of  the  Bible.  William  Tyndale's  Tra?islation  of  the 
New  Testament,  1525,  fixed  our  standard  English  once 
for  all,  and  brought  it  finally  into  every  English 
home.  Tyndale  held  fast  to  pure  English.  In  his 
two  volumes  of  political  tracts  "  there  are  only  twelve 
Teutonic  words  which  are  now  obsolete,  a  strong 
proof  of  the  influence  his  translation  of  the  Bible  has 
had  in  preserving  the  old  speech  of  England."  Of  the 
6,000  words  of  the  AiUhorised  Version,  still  in  a  great 


III. J  FROM  CHAUCER  TO  ELIZABETH,  59 

part  his  translation,  only  250  are  not  now  in  common 
use.  "  Three  out  of  four  of  his  nouns,  adverbs,  and 
verbs  are  Teutonic."  And  he  spoke  sharply  enough 
to  those  who  said  our  tongue  was  so  rude  that  the 
Bible  could  not  be  translated  into  it.  "  It  is  not  so 
rude  as  they  are  false  liars.  For  the  Greek  tongue 
agreeth  more  with  the  English  than  the  Latin  ;  a  thou- 
sand parts  better  may  it  be  translated  into  the  English 
than  into  the  Latin." 

Tyndale  was  helped  in  his  English  Bible  by  William 
Roy,  a  runaway  friar  ;  and  his  friend  Rogers,  the  first 
martyr  in  Queen  Mary's  reign,  added  the  translation 
of  the  Apocrypha^  and  made  up  what  was  wanting  in 
Tyndale's  translation  from  Chronicles  to  Malachi  out 
of  Coverdale's  translation.  It  was  this  Bible  which, 
revised  by  Coverdale  and  edited  and  re-edited  as 
CromweWs  Bible,  1539,  and  again  as  Cranmer's  Bible, 
1540,  was  set  up  in  every  parish  church  in  England. 
It  got  north  into  Scotland  and  made  the  Lowland 
English  more  like  the  London  English.  It  passed 
over  to  the  Protestant  settlements  in  Ireland.  After 
its  revisal  in  1 6 1 1  it  went  with  the  Puritan  Fathers  to 
New  England  and  fixed  the  standard  of  English  in 
America.  Eighty  millions  of  people  now  speak  the 
English  of  Tyndale's  Bible,  and  there  is  no  book  which 
has  had  so  great  an  influence  on  the  style  of  English 
literature  and  the  standard  of  English  Prose.  In 
Edward  VI  's  reign  also  Cranmer  edited  the  English 
Prayer  Book,  1549-52.  Its  English  is  a  good  deal 
mixed  with  Latin  words,  and  its  style  is  sometimes  weak 
or  heavy,  but  on  the  whole  it  is  a  fine  example  of 
stately  prose.  It  also  steadied  our  speech.  Latimer, 
on  the  contrary,  whose  Sermon  on  the  Floughers  and 
others  were  delivered  in  1549  and  in  1552,  wrote 
in  a  plain,  shrewd  style,  which  by  its  humour  and 
rude  directness  made  him  the  first  preacher  of  his  day. 
On  the  whole  the  Reformation  fixed  and  confirmed 
our  English  tongue,  but  at  the  same  time  it  brought 
6 


6o  ENGLISH  LITERATURE,  [chap. 

in  through  theology  a  large  number  of  Latin  words. 
The  pairing  of  English  and  Latin  words  {acknowledge 
and  confess^  &c.)  in  the  Prayer  Book  is  a  good  example 
of  both  these  results. 

49.  Poetry  in  the  Sixteenth  Century  under 
the  Influence  of  Chaucer. — We  shall  speak  in  this 
section  only  of  the  poets  in  England  whose  work  was 
due  to  the  publication  of  Chaucer,  Gower,  and 
I^ydgate  by  Caxton,  and  go  back  also  to  the  Scotch 
poetry  which  owed  itself  to  the  impulse  of  Chaucer. 
After  a  short  revival  that  influence  died,  and  a  new 
one  entered  from  Italy  into  English  verse  in  the  poems 
of  Surrey  and  Wyatt.  The  transition  period  between 
the  one  influence  and  the  other  is  of  great  interest, 
and  is  connected  with  the  names  of  Hawes  and 
Skelton. 

Stephen  Hawes,  in  the  reign  of  Henry  VH.,  re- 
presented the  transition  by  an  imitation  of  the  old 
work.  Amid  many  poems,  more  imitative  of  Lyd- 
gate  than  of  Chaucer,  his  long  allegorical  poem,  en- 
titled the  Pastime  of  Pleasure^  is  the  best.  In  fact,  it 
is  the  first,  since  the  middle  of  the  fifteenth  century, 
m  which  Imagination  again  began  to  plume  her  wings 
and  soar.  Within  the  realm  of  art,  it  corresponded  to 
that  effort  to  resuscitate  the  dead  body  of  the  Old 
Chivalry  which  Henry  VIII.  and  Francis  I.  attempted. 
It  goes  back  for  its  inspiration  to  the  Romance  of  the 
Rose,  and  is  an  allegory  of  the  right  education  of  a 
knight,  showing  how  Grand  Amour  won  at  last  La 
Bel  Pucell.  But,  like  all  false  resurrections,  it  died 
|uickly. 

On  the  other  hand,  John  Skelton  represents  the 
transition  by  at  first  following  the  old  poetry,  and  then, 
pressed  upon  by  the  storm  of  human  life  in  the  pre- 
sent, by  taking  an  original  line.  His  imitative  poetry 
belongs  mostly  to  Henry  VIL's  time,  but  when  the 
religious  and  political  disturbances  began  in  Henry 
VIII.'s  time,  Skelton  became  excited  by  the  cry  of  the 


III.]  FROM  CHAUCER  TO  ELIZABETH,  6i 

people  for  Church  reformation.  His  poem,  Why 
come  ye  not  to  Court]  was  a  fierce  satire  on  the  great 
Cardinal.  That  of  Colin  Clout  was  the  cry  of  the 
country  Colin,  and  of  the  Clout  or  mechanic  of  the 
town  against  the  corruption  of  the  Church ;  and  it 
represents  the  whole  popular  feeling  of  the  time  just 
before  the  movement  of  the  Reformation  took  a  new 
turn  from  the  opposition  of  the  Pope  to  Henry's 
divorce.  Both  are  written  in  short  *'rude  rayling 
rimes,  pleasing  only  the  popular  ear,"  and  Skelton 
chose  them  for  that  purpose.  Both  have  a  rough, 
impetuous  power ;  their  language  is  coarse,  full  even 
of  slang,  but  Skelton  could  use  any  language  he 
pleased.  He  was  an  admirable  scholar.  Erasmus 
calls  him  the  "  glory  and  light  of  English  letters,"  and 
Caxton  says  that  he  improved  our  language.  His 
poem,  the  Bowge  of  Court  (rewards  of  court),  is  full  of 
powerful  satire  against  the  corruption  of  the  times, 
and  of  vivid  impersonations  of  the  virtues  and  vices. 
But  he  was  not  only  the  satirist.  The  pretty  and  new 
love  lyrics  that  we  owe  to  him  foreshadow  the  Eliza- 
bethan imagination  and  life  ;  and  the  Boke  of  Phyllyp 
Sparowe,  which  tells  the  grief  of  a  nun  called  Jane 
Scrope  for  the  death  of  her  sparrow,  in  one  of  the 
gayest  and  most  inventive  poems  in  the  language. 
Skelton  stands  quite  alone  between  the  decay  of  the 
direct  influence  of  Chaucer,  whose  last  true  imitator  he 
was,  and  the  rise  of  a  new  Italian  influence  in  England 
in  the  poems  of  Surrey  and  Wyatt.  In  his  own  special 
work  he  was  entirely  original,  and  standing  thus  be- 
tween two  periods  of  poetry,  he  is  a  kind  of  landmark 
in  English  literature.  The  Ship  of  Fooles,  1508,  by 
Barclay,  is  of  this  time,  but  it  has  no  value.  It  is  a 
recast  of  a  work  published  at  Basel.  It  was  popular 
because  it  attacked  the  follies  and  questions  of  the 
time.  Its  sole  interest  to  us  is  in  its  pictures  of 
familiar  manners  and  popular  customs.  But  Barclay 
did  other  work,  and  he  was  the  first  who  brought  the 


62  .    ENGLISH  LITERATURE.  [chap. 

eclogue  into  England.  With  him  the  transition  time 
is  over,  and  the  curtain  is  ready  to  rise  on  the  Eliza- 
bethan age  of  poetry.  While  we  wait,  we  will  make  an 
interlude  out  of  the  work  of  the  poets  of  Scotland. 


SCOTTISH    POETRY. 

50.  Scottish    Poetry  is    poetry  written   in   the 

English  tongue  by  men  living  in  Scotland.  These 
men,  though  calling  tliem selves  Scotchmen,  are  of 
good  English  blood.  But  the  blood,  as  I  think,  was 
mixed  with  an  infusion  of  Celtic  blood. 

Old  Northumbria  extended  from  the  Humber  to 
the  Firth  of  Forth,  leaving  however  on  its  western 
border  a  Hne  of  unconquered  land,  which  took  in 
Lancashire,  Cumberland,  and  Westmorland  in  our 
England,  and,  over  the  border,  most  of  the  western 
country  between  the  Clyde  and  Solway  Firth.  This 
unconquered  country  was  the  Welsh  kingdom  of 
Strathclyde,  and  was  dwelt  in  by  the  Celtic  race. 
The  present  English  part  of  it  was  soon  conquered 
and  the  Celts  driven  out.  But  in  the  part  to  the  north 
of  the  Solway  Firth  the  Celts  were  not  driven  out. 
They  remained,  lived  with  the  Englishmen  who  were 
settled  over  the  old  Northumbria,  intermarried  with 
them  and  became  under  Scot  kings  one  mixed 
people.  Literature  in  the  Lowlands  then  would  have 
Celtic  elements  in  it;  literature  in  England  was 
purely  Teutonic.  The  one  sprang  from  a  mixed,  the 
other  from  an  unmixed  race.  I  draw  attention  to  this, 
because  it  seems  to  me  to  account  for  certain  peculi 
arities  which,  especially  Celtic,  are  infused  through  the 
whole  of  Scottish  poetry. 

51.  Celtic  Elements  of  Scottish  Poetry. — 
The  first  of  these  is  the  love  of  wild  nature  for  its 
own  sake.  There  is  a  passionate,  close,  and  poetical 
observation  and  description  of  natural  scenery  in 
Scotland  from   the    earliest  times  of  its  poetry,  such 


III.]         FROM  CHAUCER    TO  ELIZABETH,  ^^^ 

as  we  do  not  possess  in  English  poetry  till  the  time  of 
Wordsworth.  The  second  is  the  love  of  colour.  All 
early  Scottish  poetry  differs  from  English  in  the  ex- 
traordinary way  in  which  colour  is  insisted  on,  and 
at  times  in  the  lavish  exaggeration  of  it.  The  third 
is  the  wittier  and  coarser  humour  in  the  Scottish  poe- 
try, which  is  distinctly  Celtic  in  contrast  with  that 
humour  which  has  its  root  in  sadness  and  which  be- 
longs to  the  Teutonic  races.  Few  things  are  really 
more  different  than  the  humour  of  Chaucer  and  the 
humour  of  Dunbar,  than  the  humour  of  Cowper  and 
the  humour  of  Burns.  These  are  the  special  Celtic 
elements  in  the  Lowland  poetry. 

52.  Its  National  Elements  came  into  it  from 
the  circumstances  under  which  Scotland  rose  into  a 
separate  kingdom.  The  first  of  these  is  the  strong, 
almost  fierce  assertion  of  national  life.  The  Eng- 
lish were  as  national  as  the  Scots,  and  felt  the  emo- 
tion of  patriotism  as  strongly.  But  they  had  no 
need  to  assert  it ;  they  were  not  oppressed.  But  for 
nearly  forty  years  the  Scotch  resisted  for  their  very  life 
the  efforts  of  England  to  conquer  them.  And  the 
war  of  freedom  left  its  traces  on  their  poetry  from 
Barbour  to  Burns  and  Walter  Scott  in  the  almost  ob- 
trusive way  in  which  Scotland,  and  Scottish  liberty, 
and  Scottish  heroes  are  thrust  forward  in  their  verse. 
Their  passionate  nationality  appears  in  another  form 
in  their  descriptive  poetry.  The  natural  description 
of  Chaucer,  Shakspere,  or  even  Milton,  is  not  dis- 
tinctively English.  But  in  Scotland  it  is  always  the 
scenery  of  their  own  land  that  the  poets  describe. 
Even  when  they  are  imitating  Chaucer  they  do  not 
imitate  his  conventional  landscape.  They  put  in  a 
Scotch  landscape ;  and  in  the  work  of  such  men  as 
Gawin  Douglas  the  love  of  Scotland  and  the  love  of 
nature  mingle  their  influences  together  to  make  him 
sit  down,  as  it  were,  to  paint,  with  his  eye  on  every- 
thing he  paints,  a  series  of  Scotch  landscapes. 


64  ENGLISH  LITERATURE,  [chap. 

53.  Its  Individual  Element. — There  is  one 
more  special  element  in  early  Scotch  poetry  which 
arose,  I  think,  out  of  its  political  circumstances. 
All  through  the  struggle  for  freedom,  carried  on 
as  it  was  at  first  by  small  bands  under  separate 
leaders  till  they  all  came  together  under  a  leader 
like  Bruce,  a  much  greater  amount  of  individuality, 
and  a  greater  habit  of  it,  was  created  among  the 
Scotch  than  among  the  English.  Men  fought  for 
their  own  land  and  lived  in  their  own  way.  Every 
little  border  chieftain,  almost  every  border  farmer 
was  or  felt  himself  to  be  his  own  master.  The 
poets  would  be  likely  to  share  in  this  individual 
quality,  and  in  spite  of  the  overpowering  influence  of 
Chaucer,  to  strike  out  new  veins  of  poetic  thought  and 
new  methods  of  poetic  expression.  And  this  is  what 
happened.  Long  before  forms  of  poetry  like  the 
short  pastoral  or  the  fable  had  appeared  in  England, 
the  Scottish  poets  had  started  them.  They  were  less 
docile  imitators  than  the  English,  but  their  work  in 
the  new  forms  they  started  was  not  so  good  as  the 
after  English  work  in  the  same  forms. 

54.  The  first  of  the  Scotdsh  poets,  omitting  Thomas 
of  Erceldoune,  is  John  Barbour,  Archbishop  of 
Aberdeen.  His  long  poem  of  The  Bruce^  1375-7, 
represents  the  whole  of  the  eager  struggle  for 
Scottish  freedom  against  the  English  which  closed 
at  Bannockburn ;  and  the  national  spirit,  which  I 
have  mentioned,  springs  in  it,  full  grown,  into  life. 
But  it  is  temperate,  it  does  not  pass  into  the  fury 
against  England,  which  is  so  plain  in  writers  like 
Blind  Harry,  who,  about  1461,  composed  a  long 
poem  in  the  heroic  couplet  of  Chaucer  on  the  deeds 
of  William  Wallace.  Barbour  was  often  in  England 
for  the  sake  of  study,  and  his  patriotism  though  strong 
is  tolerant  of  England.  In  Henry  V.'s  reign,  Andrew 
OF  Wyntoun  wrote  his  Oryginale  Cronykil  of  Scot- 
land, one  of  the  riming  chronicles  of  the  time.    It  is 


III.]  FROM  CHAUCER   TO  ELIZABETH.  65 

only  in  the  next  poet  that  we  find  the  influence 
of  Chaucer,  and  it  is  hereafter  continuous  till  the 
Elizabethan  time.  James  the  First  of  Scotland 
was  prisoner  in  England  for  nineteen  years,  dll  1422. 
There  he  read  Chaucer,  and  fell  in  love  with  Lady 
Jane  Beaufort,  niece  of  Henry  IV.  The  poem  which 
he  wrote — 2 he  King's  Qu/iair  (the  quire  or  book) — is 
done  in  imitation  of  Chaucer,  and  in  Chaucer's  seven- 
lined  stanza,  which  from  James's  use  of  it  is  called 
Rime  Royal.  In  six  cantos,  sweeter,  tenderer,  and 
purer  than  any  verse  till  we  come  to  Spenser,  he 
describes  the  beginning  of  his  love  and  its  happy  end. 
^*  I  must  write,"  he  says,  ''so  much  because  I  have 
come  so  froixi  Hell  to  Heaven."  Nor  did  the  flower 
of  his  love  and  hers  ever  fade.  She  defended  him  in 
the  last  ghastly  scene  of  murder  when  his  kingly  life 
ended.  Though  imitative  of  Chaucer,  his  work  has 
an  original  element  in  it  The  natu*'al  d^scripdon  is 
more  varied,  the  colour  is  more  vivid,  and  ihere  is  a 
modern  self-reflective  quality,  a  touch  of  spiriiual  feel- 
ing which  does  not  belong  to  Chaucer  at  all.  The 
poems  of  The  Kirk  on  the  Green  and  Peebles  to  the 
Play  have  been  attributed  to  him.  If  they  be  his, 
he  originated  a  new  vein  of  poetry,  which  Burns 
afterwards  carried  out  —  the  comic  and  satirical 
ballad  poem.  But  they  are  more  likely  to  be  by 
James  V. 

Robert  Henryson,  who  died  before  1508,  a  school- 
master in  Dunfermline,  was  also  an  imitator  01  Chaucer, 
and  his  I'estament  of  Cresseid  continues  Chaucer's 
Troilus.  But  he  set  on  foot  two  new  forms  of  poetry. 
He  made  poems  out  of  ih^  fables.  They  differ  entirely 
from  the  short,  neat  form  in  which  Gay  and  La  Fon- 
taine treated  the  fable.  They  are  long  stories,  full  of 
pleasant  dialogue,  political  allusions,  and  with  elabo- 
rate morals  attached  to  them.  They  h  ive  a  peculiar 
Scotti^h  tang,  and  are  full  of  descriptions  of  Scotch 
scenery.       He  also  began    the    short  pnstoral  in  his 


66  ENGLISH  LITER  A  TURE.  [chap. 

Robin  and  Makyjie,  It  is  a  natural,  prettily-turned 
dialogue ;  and  a  flashing  Celtic  wit,  such  as  charms  us 
in  Duncan  Gny^  runs  through  it.  The  individuality 
which  struck  out  two  original  lines  of  poetic  work  in 
these  poems  appears  again  in  his  sketch  of  the  graces 
of  womanhood  in  the  Garment  of  Good  Ladies ;  a 
poem  of  the  same  type  as  those  thoughtful  lyrics 
which  describe  what  is  best  in  certain  phases  of 
professions,  or  of  life,  such  as  Sir  H.  Wotton's  Character 
of  a  Happv  Life,  or  Wordsworth's  Happy  Warrior. 

But  among  many  poets  whom  we  need  not  mention, 
the  greatest  is  William  Dunbar.  He  carries  the 
influence  of  Chaucer  on  to  the  end  of  the  fifteenth  cen- 
tury and  into  the  sixteenth.  Few  have  possessed  a  more 
masculine  genius,  and  his  work  was  as  varied  in  its 
range  as  it  was  original.  He  followed  the  form  and 
plan  of  Chaucer  in  his  two  poems  of  The  Thistle  and 
the  Rose,  15 ^3)  and  the  Golden  Terge,  1508,  the  first 
on  the  marriage  of  James  IV.  to  Margaret  Tudor,  the 
second  an  allegory  of  Love,  Beauty,  Reason,  and  the 
poet.  In  both,  though  they  begin  with  Chaucer's 
conventional  May  morning,  the  natural  description 
becomes  Scottish,  and  in  both  the  national  enthusiasm 
of  the  poet  is  strongly  marked.  But  he  soon  ceased 
to  imitate.  The  vigorous  fun  of  the  satires  and  the 
satirical  ballads  that  he  wrote  is  only  matched  by  their 
coarseness,  a  coarseness  and  a  fun  that  descended  to 
Burns.  Perhaps  Dunbar's  genius  is  still  higher  in  a 
wild  poem  in  which  he  personifies  the  seven  deadly 
sins,  and  describes  their  dance,  with  a  mixture  of 
horror  and  humour  which  makes  the  little  thing 
unique. 

A  man  almost  as  remarkable  as  Dunbar  is  Gawin 
Douglas,  Bishop  of  Dunkeld,  who  died  in  1522,  at 
^he  Court  of  Henry  VIII.,  and  was  buiied  in  the 
Savoy.  He  is  the  author  of  the  first  metrical  English 
translation  from  the  original  of  any  Latin  book.  He 
translated  Ovid's  Art  of  L.ove^  and  afterwards,  with 


III.]  FROM  CHAUCER  TO  ELIZABETH,  67 

truth  and  spirit,  the  JEneids  of  Vergil,  15 13.  To  each 
book  of  the  Aineid  he  wrote  a  prologue  of  his  own. 
And  it  is  chiefly  by  these  that  he  takes  rank  among 
the  Scottish  poets.  Three  of  them  are  descriptions 
of  the  country  in  May,  in  Autumn,  and  in  Winter. 
The  scenery  is  altogether  Scotch,  and  the  few 
Chaucerisms  that  appear  seem  absurdly  out  of  place 
in  a  picture  of  nature  which  is  as  close  as  if  it  had 
been  done  by  Keats  in  his  early  time.  The,  colour  is 
superb,  the  landscape  is  described  with  an  excessive 
detail,  but  it  is  not  composed  by  any  art  into  a  whole. 
There  is  nothing  like  it  in  England  till  Thomson's 
Seasons^  and  Thomson  was  a  Scotchman.  Only  the 
Celtic  love  of  nature  can  account  for  the  vast  distance 
between  work  li^e  this  and  contemporary  work  in 
England  such  as  Skelton's.  Of  Douglas's  other  origi- 
nal work,  one  poem,  the  Palace  of  Honour^  150 J, 
continues  the  influence  of  Chaucer. 

There  were  a  number  of  other  Scottish  poets  who 
are  all  remembered  by  Dunbar  in  his  Lame?itfor  the 
Makars,  and  praised  by  Sir  David  Lyndsw,  whom 
it  is  best  to  mention  in  this  place,  because  he  still 
connects  Scottish  poetry  with  Chaucer.  He  was  born 
about  1490,  and  is  the  last  of  the  old  Scottish  school, 
and  the  most  popular.  He  is  the  most  popular 
because  he  is  not  only  the  Poet,  but  also  the  Reformer. 
His  poem  the  Dreme,  1528,  links  him  back  to 
Chaucer.  It  is  in  the  manner  of  the  old  poet.  But 
its  scenery  is  Scottish,  and  instead  of  the  May  morn- 
ing of  Chaucer,  it  opens  on  a  winter's  day  of  wind 
and  sleet.  The  place  is  a  cave  over  the  sea,  whence 
Lyndsay  sees  the  weltering  of  the  ocean.  Chaucer 
goes  to  sleep  over  Ovid  or  Cicero,  Lyndsay  falls 
into  a  dream  as  he  thinks  of  the  '*  false  world's  insta- 
bility," wavering  like  the  sea  waves.  The  difference 
marks  not  only  the  difference  of  the  two  countries, 
but  the  difl'erent  natures  of  the  men.  Chaucer  did 
not  care  much  for  the  popular  storms,  and  loved  the 


68  ENGLISH  LITER  A  TURE  [chap. 

Court  more  than  the  Commonweal.  Lyndsay  in  the 
Dreme  and  in  two  other  poems — the  Coiiiplamt  to  the 
King,  and  the  Testament  of  the  King's  Fapyngo — is 
absorbed  in  the  evils  and  sorrows  of  the  people,  in 
the  desire  to  reform  the  abuses  of  the  Church,  of  the 
Court,  of  party,  of  the  nobiHty.  In  1539  his  Satire 
of  the  three  Estates,  a  MoraHty  interspersed  with 
interludes,  was  represented  before  James  V.  at  Lin- 
lithgow. It  was  first  acted  in  1535,  and  was  a  daring 
attack  on  the  ignorance,  profligacy,  and  exactions  of 
the  priesthood,  on  the  vices  and  flattery  of  the 
favourites — '*  a  mocking  of  abuses  used  in  the  country 
by  diverse  sorts  of  estates."  A  still  bolder  poem,  and 
one  thought  so  even  by  himself,  is  the  Monaixhie, 
1553,  his  last  work.  Reformer  as  he  was,  he  was 
more  a  social  and  political  than  a  religious  one.  Hj 
bears  the  same  relation  to  Knox  as  Langland  did  to 
Wiclif.  When  he  was  sixty-five  years  old  he  saw  the 
fruits  of  his  work.  Ecclesiastical  councils  met  to 
reform  the  Church.  But  the  reform  soon  went  beyond 
his  temperate  wishes.  In  1557,  the  Reformation  in 
Scotland  was  fairly  launched,  when  in  December  the 
Congregation  signed  the  Bond  of  Association. 
Lyndsay  had  ditrd  three  years  before ;  he  is  as  much 
the  reformer,  as  he  is  the  poet,  of  a  transition  time. 
*' Still  his  verse  hath  charms,"  but  it  was  neither  sweet 
nor  imaginative.  He  had  genuine  satire,  great  moral 
breadth,  much  preaching  power  in  verse,  coarse, 
broad  humour  in  plenty,  and  more  dramatic  power 
and  invention  than  the  rest  of  his  fellows. 

55.  Italian  Influence  :  Wyatt  and  Surrey. — 
While  poetry  under  Skelton  and  Lyndsay  became  an 
instrument  of  reform,  it  revived  as  an  art  at  the  close 
of  Henry  VIII. 's  reign  in  Sir  Thomas  Wyatt  and 
the  Earl  of  Surrey.  They  were  both  Italian 
travellers,  and  in  bringing  back  to  England  the  inspira- 
tion they  had  gained  from  Petrarca  they  re-made 
English  poetry.      They  are   our   first   really   modern 


III.]  FROM  CHAUCER  TO  ELIZABETH.  69 

poets  \    the  first  who   have  anything  of  the   modern 
manner.     Though  ItaHan  in  sentiment,  their  language 
is  more  EngHsh  than  Chaucer's,  that  is,  they  use  fewer 
romance  words.     They  handed  down   this   purity  of 
EngUsh  to  the  Elizabethan  poets,  to  Sackville,  Spenser, 
and  Shakspere.     They  introduced    a    new    kind    of 
poetry,    the   amourist   poetry.       The     *'  amourists," 
as  they   are    called,    were    poets    who    composed   a 
series   of  poems   on  the   subject   of   love  —  sonnets 
mingled    with    lyrical    pieces   after    the    manner   of 
Petrarca,  and    in     accord  with    the    love  philosophy 
he  built  on  Plato.    The  Hundred  Passions  of  Watson, 
the  sonnets  of  Sidney,  Shakspere,  Spenser,  and  Drum- 
.mond,  are    all    poems  of   this   kind,    and   the  same 
impulse  in  a  similar  form  appears  in  the  sonnets  of 
Rossetti   and   of   Mrs.    Browning.     The   subjects   of 
Wyatt  and  Surrey  were  chiefly  lyrical,   and  the  fact 
that  they  imitated   the  same  model  has  made  some 
likeness  between  them.  Like  their  personal  characters, 
however,  the  poetry  of  Wyatt  is  the  more  thoughtful  and 
the  more  strongly  felt,  but  Surrey's  has  a  sweeter  move- 
ment and  a  livelier  fancy.     Both  did  this  great  thing 
for  English  verse — they  chose  an  exquisite  model,  and 
in  imitating  it  ^'  corrected  the  ruggedness  of  English 
poetry."     Such  verse  as  Skelton's  became  impossible. 
A  new  standard  was  made  below  which  the  after  poets 
could  not  fall.     They  also  added  new  stanza  mea- 
sures to  English  verse,  and  enlarged  in  this  way  the 
"  lyrical  range."    Surrey  was  the  tirst,  in  his  trans- 
lation of  the  Second  and    Fourth   Books  of   VergiTs 
^neid,    to    use    the    ten  syllabled,    unrimed   verse, 
which  we   now   call  blank  verse.     In   his    hands 
it  is  not  worthy  of  praise;    it   had  neither  the  true 
form   nor    harmony  into    which    it   grew    afterwards. 
Sackville,  Lord  Buckhurst,  introduced  it  into  drama ; 
Marlowe,    in  his   Tamburlatne,  made  it  the  proper 
verse  of  the  drama,  and   Shakspere,   Beaumont,   and 
Massinger   used  it    splendidly.      In    plays    it   has    a 


70  ENGLISH  LITERATURE,  [chap. 

special  manner  of  its  own  ;  in  poetry  proper  it  was, 
we  may  say,  not  only  created  but  perfected  by 
Milton. 

The  new  impulse  thus  given  to  poetry  was  all  but 
arrested  by  the  bigotry  that  prevailed  during  the 
reigns  of  Edward  VI.  and  Mary,  and  all  the  work  of 
the  New  Learning  seemed  to  be  useless.  But  Thomas 
Wilson's  book  in  English  on  Rhetoric  and  Logic  \\\ 
1553,  and  the  publication  of  Thomas  Tusser's  Fointes 
of  Husbandrie  and  of  Tottel's  Miscellany  of  Uncertain 
Authors,  1557,  in  the  last  years  of  Mary's  reign, 
proved  that  something  was  stirring  beneath  the  gloom. 
The  latter  book  contained  the  poems  of  Surrey  and 
Wyatt,  and  others  by  Grimoald,  by  Lord  Vaux, 
and  Lord  Berners.  The  date  should  be  remembered, 
for  it  is  the  first  printed  book  of  modern  English 
poetry.  It  proves  that  men  cared  now  more  for  the 
new  than  the  old  poets,  that  the  time  of  imitation  of 
Chaucer  was  over,  and  that  of  original  creation  begun. 
It  ushers  in  the  Elizabethan  literature. 


IV.]       LITERATURE  OF  ELIZABETH'S  REIGN,      71 

CHAPTER  IV. 

THE  LITERATURE  OF  ELIZABETH'S  REIGN,  1559 — 1603 

Sackville's  Mirror  of  Magistrates,  1559.— Lyly's  Euphues. — 
Spenser's  Shepheardes  Calender^  1579. — Sidney's  Arcadia^ 
1580 — Hooker's  Ecclesiastical  Polity,  1594.  —  Bacon's 
Essays^  1597)  Spenser  born,  1552  ;  Faerie  Queen,  1590- 
1595;  died,  1598.— VV.  Warner's,  S.  Daniel's,  M.  Dray- 
ton's historical  poems,  1595-1598. — Sir  J.  Davies's  and 
Lord  'Qiodk^'s  philosophical  poems y  1599-1620. 

The  Dra/zia.— First  Miracle  Play,  1110. — Inierludes  of  J. 
Heywood,  1530. — I'irst  English  Comedy,  1540  ?— First 
English  Tragedy,  1562.— First  English  Theatre,  1576.— 
Marlowe's  laniburlaine,  1587. — Shakspere  burn,  1564; 
Love's  Labours  Lost,  1588  ;  Merchant  of  Venice ^  1596  ; 
Hamlet,  1602;  Cymbeline,  1610;  Henry  VHI.,  1613; 
died,  1616.  —  Ben  Jonson  begins  work,  1596;  dies, 
1637' — Beaumont  and  Fletcher  in  James  I.'s  reign. 

Webster's  first  Play,  1612. — Massinger  begins,  1620;  dies, 
1639.— John  Ford's  first  Play,  16.i9.— James  Shirley,  last 
Elizabethan  Dramatist,  lives  to  1666 ;  Theatre  closed, 
1642  ;  opens  again,  1656. 

56.  Elizabethan  Literature,  as  a  literature, 
may  be  said  to  begin  with  Surrey  and  Wyatt.  But 
as  their  poems  were  published  shortly  before  Elizabeth 
came  to  the  throne,  we  date  the  beginning  of  the 
early  period  of  EHzabethan  literature  from  the  year 
of  her  accession,  1559.  That  period  lasted  till 
1579,  and  was  followed  by  the  great  literary  out- 
burst of  the  days  of  Spenser  and  Shakspere.  The 
apparent  suddenness  of  this  outburst  has  been  an 
object  of  wonder.  Men  have  searched  for  its 
causes,  chiefly  in  the  causes  which  led  to  the 
revival  of  learning,  and  no  doubt  these  bore  on 
England  as  they  did  on  the  whole  of  Europe.  But  we 
shall  best  seek  its  nearest  causes  in  the  work  done 


72  ENGLISH  LIT  ERA  TURE.  [CHAP. 

during  the  early  years  of  Elizabeth,  and  in  doing  so 
we  shall  find  that  the  outburst  was  not  so  sudden  after 
all  It  was  preceded  by  a  very  various,  plentiful,  but 
inferior  literature,  in  which  new  forms  of  poetry  and 
prose-writu^g  were  tried,  and  new  veins  of  thought 
opened,  wl^iich  were  afterwards  wrought  out  fully  and 
splendidly.  All  the  germs  of  the  coming  age  are  to 
be  found  in  thesetwenty  years.  The  outburst  of  a 
plant  into  flower  seems  sudden,  but  the  whole  growth 
of  the  plant  has  caused  it,  and  the  flowering  of 
Elizabethan  literature  was  the  slow  result  of  the 
growth  of  the  previous  literature  and  the  influences 
that  bore  upon  it. 

57.  First  Elizabethan  Period,  1559- 1579. — 
(i.)  The  lUerary  prose  of  the  beginning  of  this  time  is 
represented  by  the  Scholemaster  of  Ascham,  published 
1570.  This  book,  which  is  on  education,  is  the  work 
of  the  scholar  of  the  new  learning  of  the  reign  of 
Henry  VIII.  who  has  lived  on  into  another  period.  It 
is  not,  properly  speaking,  Elizabethan ;  it  is  hke  a 
stranger  in  a  new  land  and  among  new  manners. 

(2 J  Poetry  is  first  represented  by  Sackville,  Eord 
Buckhurst.  The  Mirror  of  Ma^^istrates^  i559i  for 
which  he  wrote  the  Indiuiwn  and  one  tale,  is  a  poem 
on  the  model  of  Boccaccio's  Falls  of  Princes,  already 
imitated  by  Lydgate.  Seven  poets,  along  with 
Sackville,  contributed  tales  to  it,  but  his  poem  is  the 
only  one  of  any  value.  The  Induction  paints  the 
poet's  descent  into  Avernus,  and  his  meeting  with 
Henry  Stafford,  Duke  of  Buckingham,  whose  fate  he 
tells  with  a  grave  and  inventive  imagination.  Being 
written  in  the  manner  and  stanza  of  the  elder  poets, 
this  poem  has  been  called  the  transition  between 
Lydgate  and  Spenser.  But  it  does  not  truly  belong 
to  the  old  tmie ;  it  is  as  modern  as  Spenser,  and  its 
allegorical  representations  are  in  the  same  manner  as 
those  of  Spenser.  George  Gascoigne,  whose  satire, 
the  Steele  Glas,  1576,  is  our  first  long  satirical  poem,  is 


IV.]      LITERATURE  OF  ELIZABETH'S  REIGN,      73 

the  best  among  a  crowd  of  lesser  poets  who  came 
after  Sackville.  They  wrote  legends,  pieces  on  the 
wars  and  discoveries  of  the  Englishmen  of  their  day, 
epitaphs,  epigrams,  songs,  sonnets,  elegies,  fables,  and 
sets  of  love  poems ;  and  the  best  things  they  did  were 
collected  in  a  miscellany  called  the  Far adise  of  Dainty 
Devices^  in  1576.  This  book,  with  Tottel's,  set  on 
foot  in  the  later  years  of  Elizabeth  a  crowd  of  other 
miscellanies  of  poetry  which  were  of  great  use  to  the 
poets.  Lyrical  poetry,  and  that  which  we  may  call 
"occasional  poetry,''  were  now  fairly  started.  The 
popular  Ballads  took  a  wide  range.  The  registers  of 
the  Stationers'  Company  prove  that  there  was  scarcely 
any  event  of  the  day,  nor  almost  any  controversy  in 
literature,  politics,  religion,  which  was  not  the  subject 
of  verse,  and  of  verse  into  which  imagination  strove 
to  enter.  The  ballad  may  be  said  to  have  done  the 
work  of  the  modern  weekly  review.  It  stimulated 
and  informed  the  intellectual  life  of  England. 

(3.)  Frequent  translations  were  now  made  from  the 
classical  winters.  We  know  the  names  of  more  than 
twelve  men  who  did  this  work,  and  there  must  have 
been  many  more.  Already  in  Henry  VIII.'s  and 
Edward  VI. 's  time,  ancient  authors  had  been  made 
English;  and  before  1579,  Vergil,  Ovid,  Cicero, 
Demosthenes,  and  many  Greek  and  Latin  plays, 
were  translated.  Among  the  rest,  Phaer's  Vergil,  1562, 
Arthur  Golding's  Ovid's  Met  am,  1565,  and  George 
Turberville's  Hist.Epis.  of  Ovid,  1567,  are,  and  especi- 
ally the  first,  remarkable.  In  this  way  the  best  models 
were  brought  before  the  English  people,  and  it  is  in 
the  influence  of  the  spirit  of  Greek  and  Roman 
literature  on  literary  form  and  execution  that  we 
are  to  find  one  of  the  most  active  causes  of  the 
greatness  of  the  later  Elizabethan  literature.  Nor 
were  the  old  English  poets  neglected.  Though 
Chaucer,  and  Lydgate,  Langland  and  the  rest,  were 
no  longer  imitated  in  this  time  of  fresh  creation,  they 


74  ENGLISH  LITERATURE.  [chap. 

were  studied,  and  they  added  their  impulse  of  life  to 
original  poets  like  Spenser. 

(4.)  Theological  Eeform  stirred  men  to  another 
kind  of  literary  work.  A  great  number  of  polemical 
ballads,  and  pamphlets,  and  plays  issued  every  year 
from  obscure  presses  and  filled  the  land.  Poets  like 
George  Gascoigne,  and  still  more  Barnaby  Googe,  re- 
present in  their  work  the  hatred  the  young  men  had 
of  the  old  religious  system.  It  was  a  spirit  which 
did  not  do  much  for  literature,  but  it  quickened  the 
habit  of  composition,  and  made  it  easier  The  Bible 
also  became  common  property,  and  its  language 
glided  into  all  theological  writing  and  gave  it  a  literary 
tone ;  while  the  publication  of  John  Foxe's  Acts  and 
Monuments  or  Book  of  Martyrs^  ^5^3?  g^-ve  to  the 
people  all  over  England  a  book  which,  by  its  simple 
style,  the  ease  of  its  story -telling,  and  its  popular  charm 
made  the  very  peasants  who  heard  it  read  feel  what 
is  meant  by  literature. 

(5.)  The  history  of  the  country  and  its  manners  was 
not  neglected.  A  whole  class  of  antiquarians  wrote 
steadily,  if  with  some  dulness,  on  this  subject. 
Grafton,  Stow,  Holinshed  and  others,  at  least  sup- 
pHed  materials  for  the  study  and  use  of  the  historical 
dramatists. 

(6.)  The  love  of  stories  grew  quickly.  The  old 
English  tales  and  ballads  were  eagerly  read  and 
collected.  Italian  tales  by  various  authors  were 
translated  and  sown  so  broadcast  over  London  by 
William  Painter  in  his  collection.  The  Palace  of 
Pleasure,  1566,  by  George  Turbervile,  in  his  Tragical 
Tales  in  verse,  and  by  others,  that  it  is  said  they 
were  to  be  bought  at  every  bookstall.  The  Romances  ' 
of  Spain  and  Italy  poured  in,  and  Aniadis  de  Gaul, 
and  the  companion  romances  the  Arcadia  of  Sanna- 
zaro,  and  the  Pthiopian  History,  were  sources  of 
books  like  Sidney's  Arcadia  and,  with  the  classics,  sup- 
plied materials  for  the  pageants.     A  great  number  of 


IV.]      LITERATURE  OF  ELIZABETH'S  REIGN.       75^^^ 

subjects  for  prose  and  poetry  were  thus  made  ready 
for  literary  men,  and  prose  fiction  became  possible  in 
English  literature. 

(7.)  Tht .  masques,  pageants,  interludes,  and  plays 
that  were  written  at  this  time  are  scarcely  to  be 
counted.  At  every  great  ceremonial,  whenever  the 
queen  made  a  progress  or  visited  one  of  the  great 
lords  or  a  university,  at  the  houses  of  the  nobility, 
and  at  the  court  on  all  important  days,  some  obscure 
versifier,  or  a  young  scholar  at  the  Inns  of  Court,  at 
Oxford  or  at  Cambridge,  produced  a  masque  or  a 
pageant,  or  wrote  or  translated  a  play.  The  habit  of 
play-writing  became  common  ;  a  kind  of  school,  one 
might  almost  say  a  manufacture  of  plays,  arose,  which 
partly  accounts  for  the  rapid  production,  the  excellence, 
and  the  multitude  of  plays  that  we  find  after  1576.  Re- 
presented all  over  England,  these  masques,  pageants, 
and  dramas  were  seen  by  the  people,  who  were  thus 
accustomed  to  take  an  interest,  though  of  an  unedu- 
cated kind,  in  the  larger  drama  that  was  to  follow. 
The  literary  men  on  the  other  hand  ransacked,  in 
order  to  find  subjects  and  scenes  for  their  pageants, 
ancient  and  mediaeval,  magical,  and  modern  litera- 
ture, and  many  of  them  in  doing  so  became  fine 
scholars.  The  imagination  of  England  was  quickened 
and  educated  in  this  way,  and  as  Biblical  stories  were 
also  largely  used,  the  images  of  oriental  life  were 
added  to  the  materials  of  imagination. 

(8.)  Another  influence  bore  on  literature.  It  was 
that  given  by  the  stories  of  the  voyagers,  who,  in  the 
new  commercial  activity  of  the  country,  penetrated 
in'o  strange  lands,  and  saw  the  strange  monsters  and 
savages  which  the  poets  now  added  to  the  fairies, 
dwarfs,  and  giants  of  the  Romances.  Before  1579, 
books  had  been  published  on  the  north-west  passage. 
Frobishor  had  made  his  voyages  and  Drake  had 
started,  to  return  in  1580  to  amaze  all  England  with 
the  story  of  his  sail  round  the  world  and  of  the  riches 


76  ENGLISH  LITERATURE.  [chap. 

of  the  Spanish  Main.  We  may  trace  everywhere  in 
Elizabethan  literature  the  impression  made  by  the 
wonders  told  by  the  sailors  and  captams  who  ex- 
plored and  fought  from  the  North  Pole  to  the 
Southern  Seas. 

(9.)  Lastly,  we  have  proof  that  there  was  a  large 
number  of  persons  ivriting  who  did  not  publish  their 
works.  It  was  considered  at  this  time,  that  to  write 
for  the  public  injured  a  man,  and  unless  he  were 
driven  by  poverty  he  kept  his  manuscript  by  him.  But 
things  were  changed  when  a  great  genius  like  Spenser 
took  the  world  by  storm ;  when  Lyly's  Eiiphues  en- 
chanted the  w^hole  of  court  society ;  when  a  great 
gentleman  like  Sir  Philip  Sidney  became  a  wiiter. 
Literature  was  made  the  fashion,  and  the  disgrace 
being  taken  from  it,  the  production  became  enormous. 
Manuscripts  written  and  laid  by  were  at  once  sent 
forth  ;  and  when  the  rush  began  it  grew  by  its  own 
force.  Those  who  had  previously  been  kept  from 
wTiting  by  its  unpopularity  now  took  it  up  eagerly, 
arTd  those  who  had  written  before  wrote  twdce  as 
much  now.  The  great  improvement  also  in  literary 
quality  is  easily  accounted  for  by  this — that  men 
strove  to  equal  such  work  as  Sidney's  or  Spenser's,  and 
that  a  wider  and  more  exacting  criticism  arose.  Nor 
must  one  omit  to  say,  that  owing  to  this  employment 
of  life  on  so  vast  a  number  of  subjects,  and  to  the 
voyages,  and  to  the  new  literatures  searched  into,  and 
to  the  heat  of  theological  strife,  a  multitude  of  new 
words  streamed  into  the  language,  and  enriched  the 
vocabulary  of  imagination.  Shakspere  uses  15,000 
words. 

58.  The  Later  Literature  of  Elizabeth's 
Reign,  1579-1602,  begins  with  the  publication  of 
Lyly's  Eiiphues  and  Spenser's  Shepheardes  Calendar, 
both  in  1579,  and  with  the  writing  of  Sir  Philip 
Sidney's  Arcadia  and  his  Defence  of  Poetrie,  1580-81. 
It  will  be  best  to  leave  the  poem  oif  Spenser  aside  till 


IV.  ]      LITERA  TURK  OF  ELIZABE  Til 'S  REIGN,       77 

we  come  to  write  of  the  poets.  The  Euphues  and  the 
Arcadia  carried  on  the  story- telling  literature  ;  the 
Defence  of  Poetrie  created  a  new  form  of  literature, 
that  of  criticism. 

Tne  Euphues  was  the  work  of  John  Lyly,  poet  and 
dramatist.  It  is  in  tv/o  parts,  Euphues  the  Anatomic 
of  Wit,  and  Euphues  and  his  England,  In  six 
years  it  ran  through  five  editions,  so  great  was  its 
popularity.  Its  prose  style  is  too  poetic,  but  is 
admirable  for  its  smoothness  and  charm,  and  its 
very  faults  were  of  use  in  softening  the  rudeness 
of  previous  prose.  The  story  is  long,  and  is  more 
a  loose  fram^iwork  into  which  Lyly  could  fit  his 
thoughts  on  love,  friendship,  education,  and  religion, 
than  a  true  story.  The  second  part  brings  Euphues, 
the  young  A  henian,  to  England  through  Dover  and 
Canterbury  to  London,  and  is  filled  up  with  two 
stories ;  and  supplemented  by  Euphues'  Glass  for 
Europe.  It  made  its  mark  because  it  fell  in  with 
all  the  fantastic  and  changeable  life  of  the  time.  Its 
far-fetched  conceits,  its  extravagance  of  gallantry,  its 
endless  metaphors  from  the  classics  and  natural 
history,  its  curious  and  gorgeous  descriptions  of  dress, 
and  its  pale  imitation  of  chivalry,  were  all  reflected  in 
the  life  and  talk  and  dress  of  the  court  of  EHzabeth. 
It  became  the  fashion  to  talk  "  Euphuism,"  and,  Hke 
the  Utopia  of  More,  Lyly's  book  has  created  an 
English  word. 

The  Arcadia  was  the  work  of  Sir  Philip  Sidney, 
and  though  written  in  1580,  did  not  appear  till  after 
his  death.  It  is  more  poetic  in  style  than  the 
Euphues,  and  Sidney  himself,  as  he  wrote  it  under  the 
rrees  of  Wilton,  would  have  called  it  a  pastoral  poem. 
It  is  less  the  image  of  the  time  than  of  the  man.  We 
all  know  that  bright  and  noble  figure,  the  friend  of 
Spenser,  the  lover  of  Stella,  the  last  of  the  old  knights, 
the  poet,  the  critic,  and  the  Christian,  who,  wounded 
CO   the   death,  gave  up  the  cup  of  water  to  a  dying 


78  ENGLISH  LITERATURE,  [chap. 

soldier.  We  find  his  whole  spirit  in  the  story  of  the 
Arcadia,  in  the  first  two  books  and  part  of  the  third, 
which  alone  were  written  by  hira.  It  is  a  romance 
mixed  up  with  pastoral  stories,  after  the  fashion  of 
the  Spanish  romances.  The  characters  are  real,  but 
the  story  is  confused  by  endless  digressions.  The 
sentiment  is  too  fine  and  delicate  for  the  world.  The 
descriptions  are  picturesque  and  the  sentences  made 
as  perfect  as  possible.  A  quaint  or  poetic  thought  or 
an  epigram  appear  in  every  line.  There  is  no  real  art 
in  it,  or  in  its  prose.  But  it  is  so  full  of  poetical 
thought  that  it  became  a  mine  into  which  poets  dug 
for  subjects. 

59.  Criticism  began  with  Sidney's  Art  of  Foetrie. 
Its  style  shows  us  that  he  felt  how  faulty  the  prose  of 
the  Arcadia  was.  The  book  made  a  new  step  in  the 
creation  of  a  dignified  English  prose.  It  is  still  too 
flowery,  but  in  it  the  fantastic  prose  of  his  own  Arcadia 
and  of  the  Euphiies  dies.  As  criticism,  it  is  chiefly 
concerned  with  poetry.  It  defends,  against  Stephen 
Gosson's  School  of  Abuse,  in  which  poetry  and  plays 
were  attacked  from  the  Puritan  point  of  view,  the 
nobler  uses  of  poetry.  Sackville,  Surrey,  and  Spenser 
are  praised,  and  the  other  poets  made  little  of  in  its 
pages.  It  was  followed  by  Webbe's  Discourse  of 
English  Foetrie  written  "  to  stirre  up  some  other  of 
meet  abilitie  to  bestow  travell  on  the  matter."  Already 
the  other  was  travailing,  and  the  Arte  of  English 
Foesie,  supposed  to  be  written  by  George  Puttenham, 
was  published  in  1589.  It  is  the  most  elaborate  book 
on  the  whole  subject  in  Elizabeth's  reign,  and  it  marks 
the  strong  interest  now  taken  in  poetry  in  the  highest 
society  that  the  author  says  he  writes  it  '*to  help  the 
courtiers  and  the  gentlewomen  of  the  court  to  write 
good  poetry,  that  the  art  may  become  vulgar  for  all 
Englishmen's  use." 

60.  Later  Prose  Literature. — (i.)  Theological 
Literature  r^^niained  for   some  years  after   1580  only 


IV.]      LITER  A  TURK  OF  ELIZABETH'S  REIGAT,       79 

a  literature  of  pamphlets.  Puritanism  in  its  attack 
on  the  stage,  and  in  the  Martin  Marprelate  con- 
troversy upon  episcopal  government  in  the  Church, 
flooded  England  with  small  books.  Lord  Bacon 
even  joined  in  the  latter  controversy,  and  Nash  the 
dramatist  made  himself  famous  in  the  war  by  the 
vigour  and  fierceness  of  his  wit.  Over  this  troubled , 
sea  rose  at  last  the  stately  work  of  Richard 
Hooker.  It  was  in  1594  that  the  first  four  books 
of  The  Laws  of  Ecclesiastical  Polity^  a  defence  of 
the  Church  against  the  Puritans,  were  given  to  the 
world.  Before  his  death  he  finished  the  other  four. 
The  book  has  remained  ever  since  a  standard  work. 
It  is  as  much  moral  and  pofitical  as  theological.  Its 
style  is  grave,  clear,  and  often  musical.  He  adorned 
it  with  the  figures  of  poetry,  but  he  used  them  with 
temperance,  and  the  grand  and  rolling  rhetoric  with 
which  he  oftjn  concludes  an  argument  is  kept  for  its 
right  place.  On  the  whole,  it  is  the  first  monument  of 
splendid  literary  prose  that  we  possess. 

(2.)  We  may  place  alongside  of  it,  as  the  other 
great  prose  w^ork  of  Elizabeth's  later  time,  the  de- 
velopment of  The  Essay  in  Lord  Bacon's  Essays, 
1597.  Their  highest  literary  merit  is  their  combina- 
tion of  charm  and  even  of  poetic  prose  with  concise- 
ness of  expression  and  fulness  of  thought.  The  rest 
of  Bacon's  work  belongs  to  the  following  reign. 

(3.)  The  Literature  of  Travel  was  carried  on  by 
the  publication  in  1589  of  Hakluyt's  Navigation, 
Voyages,  and  Discoveries  of  the  English  Nation,  The 
influence  of  a  compilation  of  this  kind,  containing  the 
great  deeds  of  the  English  on  the  seas,  has  been  felt 
ever  since  in  the  literature  of  fiction  and  poetry. 

(4.)  In  the  Tales,  which  poured  out  like  a  flood 
from  the  dramatists,  from  such  men  as  Peele,  and 
Lodge,  and  Greene,  we  find  the  origin  of  EngHsh 
fiction,  and  the  subjects  of  many  of  our  plays  ;  while 
the  fantastic  desire  to  revive  the  practices  of  chivalry 


8o  ENGLISH  LITER  A  TURE.  [c  «  ap 

which  was  expressed  in  the  Arcadia^  found  food  in  the 
continuous  translation  of  romances,  chiefly  of  the 
Charlemagne  cycle,  but  now  more  from  Spain  than 
from  France  ;  and  in  the  reading  of  the  Italian  poets, 
Boiardo,  Tasso,  and  Ariosto,  who  supplied  a  crowd  of 
our  books  with  the  machinery  of  magic,  and  with 
conventional  descriptions  of  nature  and  of  women's 
beauty. 

6r.  Edmund  Spenser. — The  later  Elizabethan 
poetry  begins  with  the  Shepheardes  Calendar  of 
Spenser.  Spenser  was  born  in  London  in  1552, 
and  educated  at  the  Merchant  Taylors'  Grammar 
School  which  he  left  for  Cambridge  in  April,  1569. 
There  seems  to  be  evidence  that  in  this  year  the 
Sonnets  of  Petrarca  and  the  Visions  of  Bellay^  after- 
wards published  in  1591,  were  written  by  him  for  a 
miscellany  of  verse  and  prose  issued  by  Vander  Npodt, 
a  refugee  Flemish  physician.  At  sixteen  or  seven- 
teen then  he  began  literary  work.  At  college,  Gabriel 
Harvey,  a  scholar  and  critic,  and  the  Hobbinolt  of 
Spenser's  works,  and  Edward  Kirke,  the  E.  K.  of  the 
Shepheardes  Calendar,  were  his  friends.  In  1576  he 
took  his  degree  of  M.A.,  and  before  he  returned 
to  London  spent  some  time  in  the  wilds  of  Lanca- 
shire, where  he  fell  in  love  with  the  "  Rosalind " 
of  his  poetry,  a  **fair  widowe's  daughter  of  the 
glen."  His  love  was  not  returned,  a  rival  inter- 
fered, but  he  clung  fast  until  his  marriage  to  this 
early  passion.  His  disappointment  drove  him  to  the 
South,  and  there,  1579,  he  was  made  known  through 
Leicester  to  Leicester's  nephew,  Philip  Sidney.  With 
him,  and  perhaps  at  Penshurst,  \}c\^  Shepheardes  Calendar 
was  finished  for  the  press,  and  the  Faerie  Queen  con- 
ceived. The  publication  of  the  former  work  made 
Spenser  the  first  poet  of  the  day,  and  so  fresh  and 
musical,  and  so  abundant  in  new  life  were  its  twelve 
eclogues,  that  men  felt  that  at  last  England  had  given 
birth  to  a  poet  as  original  as  Chaucer.     Each  month 


IV.]    LTTERATUKE    OF  ELIZABETH'S  REIGN,      8i 

of  the  year  had  its  own  eclogue;  some  were  concerned 
with  his  shattered  love,  two  of  them  were  fables,  three 
of  them  satires  on  the  lazy  clergy  ;  one  was  devoted 
to  fair  Eliza's  praise.  I'he  others  belong  to  rustic 
shepherd  life.  The  English  of  Chaucer  is  imitated, 
but  the  work  is  full  of  a  new  spirit,  and  as  Spenser 
had  begun  with  translating  Petrarca^  so  here,  in 
two  of  the  eclogues,  he  imitates  Clement  Marot. 
The  *' Puritanism  "  of  the  poem  is  the  same  as  that 
of  the  Faerie  Queen,  Save  in  abhorrence  of  Rome, 
Spenser  does  not  share  in  the  poUtics  of  Puritanism. 
Nor  does  he  separate  himself  from  the  world.  He  is 
as  much  at  home  in  society  and  with  the  arts  as  any 
literary  courtier  of  the  day.  He  was  Puritan  in 
his  attack  on  the  sloth  and  pomp  of  the  clergy  ;  but 
his  moral  ideal,  built  up,  as  it  was,  out  of  Christianity 
and  Platonism,  rose  far  above  the  narrower  ideal  of 
Puritanism. 

In  the  next  year,  1580,  he  went  to  Ireland  with 
Lord  Grey  of  Wilton  as  secretary,  and  after- 
wards saw  and  learnt  that  condition  of  things  which 
he  described  in  his  View  of  the  Present  State  of  Ire- 
land.  He  was  made  Clerk  of  Degrees  in  the  Court 
of  Chancery  in  1581,  and  Clerk  of  the  Council  of 
Munster  in  15S6,  audit  was  then  that  the  manor  and 
castle  of  Kilcolman  were  granted  to  him.  Here,  at 
the  foot  of  the  Galtees,  and  bordered  to  the  north  by 
the  wild  country,  the  scenery  of  which  fills  the  Faerie 
Quee7t,  and  in  whose  woods  and  savage  places  such 
adventures  constantly  took  place  in  the  service  of 
Elizabeth  as  are  recorded  in  the  Faerie  Queen,  the 
first  three  books  of  that  great  poem  were  written. 

62.  The  Faerie  Queen. — The  plan  of  the  poem, 
so  impossible  to  discover  from  the  poem  itself,  is 
described  in  Spenser's  prefatory  letter  to  Raleigh. 
The  twelve  books  were  to  tell  the  warfare  of  twelve 
Knights,  in  whom  the  twelve  virtues  of  Aristotle  were 
represented;  and  their  warfare  w^as  against  the  vices 


82  ENGLISH  LITERATURE,  [chap. 

and  errors,  impersonated,  which  opposed  those  virtues. 
In  Arthur,  the  Prince — for  the  machinery  of  the  poem 
is  from  the  old  Celtic  story — the  Magnificence  of  the 
whole  of  virtue  is  represented,  and  he  was  at  last  to 
unite  himself  in  marriage  to  the  Faerie  Queen,  that 
divine  glory  of  God  to  which  all  human  act  and 
thought  aspired.  Six  books  of  this  plan  were  finished  ; 
the  legends  of  Holiness,  Temperance,  and  Chastity, 
of  Friendship,  Justice,  and  Courtesy.  The  two  post- 
humous cantos  on  Mutability  seem  to  have  been  part 
of  the  seventh  legend,  on  Constancy.  Alongside  of 
the  spiritual  allegory  is  the  historical  one,  in  which 
Elizabeth  is  Gloriana,  and  Mary  of  Scotland  is  Duessa, 
and  Leicester,  and  at  times  Sidney,  is  Prince  Arthur, 
and  Arthegall  is  Lord  Grey,  and  Raleigh  is  Timias,  and 
Philip  IL  the  Soldan,  or  Grantorto.  In  the  midst,  other 
allegories  slip  in,  referring  to  events  of  the  day,  and 
Elizabeth  becomes  Belphoebe  and  Britomart,  and  Mary 
is  Radegund,  and  Sidney  is  Calidore,  and  Alengon  is 
Braggadochio.  The  dreadful  ^^justice''  done  in  Ireland, 
by  the  *•  iron  man,''  and  the  wars  in  Belgium,  and 
Norfolk's  conspiracy,  and  the  Armada,  and  the  trial 
of  Mary  are  also  shadowed  forth. 

The  allegory  is  clear  in  the  first  two  books.  After- 
wards it  is  troubled  with  digressions,  sub-allegories, 
genealogies,  widi  anything  that  Spenser's  fancy  led 
him  to  introduce.  Stories  are  dropt  and  never  taken 
up  again,  and  the  whole  tale  is  so  tangled  that  it  loses 
the  interest  of  narrative.  But  it  retains  the  interest 
of  exquisite  allegory.  It  is  the  poem  of  the  noble 
powers  of  the  human  soul  struggling  towards  union 
with  God,  and  warring  against  all  the  forms  of  evil ; 
and  these  powers  become  real  personages,  whose  lives 
and  battles  Spenser  tells  in  verse  so  musical  and  so 
gliding,  so  delicately  wTought,  so  rich  in  imaginative 
ornament,  and  so  inspired  with  the  finer  life  of  beauty, 
that  he  has  been  called  the  poets'  Poet.  Descriptions 
like  those  of  the  House  of  Pride  and  the  Mask  of 


IV.]    LITERATURE   OF  ELIZABETH'S  REIGN.       83 

Cupid,  and  of  the  Months,  are  so  vivid  in  form  and 
colour,  that  they  have  always  made  subjects  for  artists ; 
while  the  allegorical  personages  are,  to  the  very  last 
detail,  wrought  out  by  an  imagination  which  describes 
not  only  the  general  character,  but  the  special 
characteristics  of  the  Virtues  or  the  Vices,  of  the 
Months  of  the  year,  or  of  the  Rivers  of  Kngland.  In 
its  ideal  whole,  the  poem  represents  the  new  love 
of  chivalry,  of  classical  learning ;  the  delight  in 
mystic  theories  of  love  and  religion,  in  allegorical 
schemes,  in  splendid  spectacles  and  pageants,  in  wild 
adventure ;  the  love  of  England,  the  hatred  of  Spain, 
the  strange  worship  of  the  Queen,  even  Spenser's  own 
new  love.  It  takes  up  and  uses  the  popular  legends 
of  fairies,  dwarfs,  and  giants,  all  the  machinery  of  the 
Italian  epics,  and  mingles  them  up  with  the  wild 
scenery  of  Ireland  and  the  savages  and  wonders 
of  the  New  World.  Almost  the  whole  spirit  of  the 
Renaissance  under  Elizabeth,  except  its  coarser  and 
baser  elements,  is  in  its  pages.  Of  anything  impure, 
or  ugly,  or  violent,  there  is  no  trace.  And  Spenser 
adds  to  all  Lis  own  sacred  love  of  love,  his  own  pre- 
eminent sense  of  the  loveliness  of  loveliness,  walking 
through  the  whole  of  this  woven  world  of  faerie — 

**  With  the  moon's  beauty  and  the  moon's  soft  pace," 

The  first  three  books  were  finished  in  Ireland,  and 
Raleigh  listened  to  them  in  1589  at  Kilcolman  Castle, 
among  the  alder  shades  of  the  river  MuUa  that  fed  the 
lake  below  the  castle.  Delighted  with  the  poem,  he 
brought  Spenser  to  England,  and  the  Queen,  the  courts 
and  the  whole  of  England  soon  shared  in  Raleigh's 
delight.  It  was  the  first  great  ideal  poem  .hat  England 
had  produced,  and  it  is  the  source  of  all  cur  modern 
poetry.  It  has  never  ceased  to  make  poets,  and  it 
will  live,  as  he  said  in  his  dedication  to  the  Queen, 
".  with  the  eternitie  of  her  fame.'' 
8 


84  ENGLISH  LITERATURE.  [chap. 

63.  Spenser's  Minor  Poems. — The  next  year, 
159 1,  Spenser  being  still  in  England,  collected  his 
smaller  pojms  and  published  them.  Among  them 
Alot/ier  Hubbard's  I  ale  is  a  remarkable  satire,  some- 
what in  the  manner  of  Chaucer,  on  society,  on  the 
evils  of  a  beggar  soldiery,  of  the  Church,  of  the  court, 
and  of  misgovernment.  The  Ruins  of  Time,  and  still 
more  the  Tears  of  the  Muses,  support  the  statement 
that  literature  was  loukt-d  on  coldly  previous  to  1580. 
Sidney  had  died  in  1586,  and  three  of  these  poems 
bemoan  his  death.  The  others  are  of  slight  importance, 
and  the  whole  collection  was  entitled  Complaints,  Re- 
turning to  Ireland,  he  gave  an  accour.t  of  his  visit  and 
of  the  court  of  Elizabeth  in  Colin  Clout* s  come  Hojne 
again,  1591,  and  at  last,  after  more  than  a  year's  pur- 
suit, won  his  second  love  for  his  wife,  and  found  with 
her  perfjct  hapj>iness.  A  long  series  of  Sonnets 
records  the  progress  of  his  wooing,  and  the  Epitha- 
lamium,  his  marriage  hymn,  is  the  most  glorious  love- 
song  in  the  English  tongue.  At  the  close  of  1595  he 
brought  to  England  in  a  second  visit  the  last  three 
books  of  the  Faerie  Queen,  The  next  year  he  spent 
in  London,  and  published  thjse  books  along  with  the 
Prothalamion  on  the  marriage  of  Lord  Worcester's 
daughters,  the  Daphnaida ,  and  the  Hymns  on  Love 
and  Beau  y  and  on  Heavenly  Love  and  Beauty.  The 
two  first  hymns  were  written  in  his  youth  ;  the  two 
others,  now  written,  enshrine  that  love  philosophy 
of  Petrarca  which  makes  earthly  love  find  its  end 
in  the  love  of  God.  The  close  of  his  life  was 
sorrowful.  In  1598,  Tyrone's  rebellion  drove  him 
out  of  Ireland.  Kilcolman  was  sacked  and  burnt,  one 
of  his  children  perished  in  the  flames,  and  Spenser 
and  his  family  fled  for  their  lives  to  England.  Broken- 
hearted, poor,  but  not  forgotten,  the  poet  died  in  a 
London  tavern.  All  his  fellows  went  with  his  body 
to  the  grave,  where,  close  by  Chaucer,  he  lies  in  AVest- 
minster  Abbey.     London,   "his  most  kindly  nurse," 


IV.]    LITERATURE    OF  ELIZABETH'S  REIGN.      85 

takes  care   also  of  his  dust,  and  England  keeps  him 
in  her  love. 

64.  Later  Elizabethan  Poetry :  Transla- 
tions.— There  are  three  translators  that  take  literary 
rank  among  the  crowd  that  carried  on  the  work 
of  the  earlier  time.  Two  mark  the  influence  of 
Italy,  one  the  more  powerful  influence  of  the  Greek 
spirit.  Sir  John  Harington  in  1591  translated 
Ariosto's  Orlando  Furioso,  Fairfax  in  1600  trans- 
lated TdiS^o^^  Jerusale?n,  and  his  book  is  "one  of 
the  glories  of  Elizabeth's  reign."  But  the  noblest 
translation  is  that  of  Homers  whole  work  by  George 
Chapman,  the  dramatist,  the  first  part  of  which  ap- 
peared in  1598.  The  vivid  life  and  energy  of  the 
time,  its  creative  power  and  its  force,  are  expressed  in 
this  poem,  which  is  "  more  an  Elizabethan  tale  written 
about  Achilles  and  Ulysses  "  than  a  translation.  The 
rushing  gallop  of  the  long  fourteen-syllable  stanza  in 
which  it  is  written  has  the  fire  and  swiftness  of  Homer, 

-but  it  has  not  his  directness  or  dignity..  Its  **  incon- 
querable  quaintness  "  and  diffuseness  are  as  unlike  the 

rpure  form  and  light  and  measure  of  Greek  work  as  pos- 
sible. But  it  is  a  disrinct  poem  of  such  power  that  it 
will  excite  and  delight  all  lovers  of  poetry,  as  it  excited 
and  delighted  Keats.  John  Florio's  Translation  of  the 
Essays  of  Montaigne,  1603,  is  also,  though  in  prose, 
to  be  mentioned  here,  because  Shakspere  used  the 
book,  and  because  we  must  trace  Montaigne's  in- 
fluence on  English  literature  even  before  his  retrans- 
lation  by  Charles  Cotton. 

The  Four  Phases  of  Poetry  after  1580. — 
Spenser  reflected  in  his  poems  the  romantic  spirit 
of  the  English  Renaissance.  The  other  poetry  of 
Elizabeth's  reign  reflected  the  whole  of  English 
Life.  The  best  way  to  arrange  it — omitting  as  yet 
the  Drama — is  in  an  order  parallel  to  the  growth  of 
the  national  life,  and  the  proof  that  it  is  the  best 
way  is,  that  on   the  whole  such  an  order  is  a  true 


86  ENGLISH  LITERATURE,  [chap. 

chronological  order.  First  then,  if  we  compare 
England  after  1580,  as  writers  have  often  done,  to  an 
ardent  youth,  we  shall  find  in  the  poetry  of  the  first 
years  that  followed  that  date  all  the  elements  of  youth. 
It  is  a  poetry  of  love,  and  romance,  and  imagination. 
Secondly^  and  later  on,  when  Englishmen  grew  older 
in  feeling,  their  enthusiasm,  which  had  flitted  here 
and  there  in  action  and  literature  over  all  kinds  of 
subjects,  settled  down  into  a  steady  enthusiasm  for 
England  itself.  The  country  entered  on  its  early  man- 
hood, and  parallel  with  this  there  is  the  great  out- 
burst of  historical  plays,  and  a  set  of  poets  whom  I 
will  call  the  Patriotic  Poets.  Thirdly^  and  later  still, 
the  fire  and  strength  of  the  people,  becoming  inward, 
resulted  in  a  graver  and  more  thoughtful  national  life, 
and  parallel  with  this  are  the  tragedies  of  Shakspere 
and  the  poets  who  have  been  called  philosophical. 
These  three  classes  of  Poets  overlapped  one  another, 
and  grew  up  gradually,  but  on  the  whole  their  succes- 
sion is  the  image  of  a  real  succession  of  national 
thought  and  emotion. 

K  fourth  and  separate  phase  does  not  represent,  as 
these  do,  a  new  national  life,  a  new  religion,  and  new 
politics,  but  the  despairing  struggle  of  the  old  faith 
against  the  new.  There  were  numbers  of  men,  such 
as  Wordsworth  has  finely  sketched  in  old  Norton  in 
the  Doe  of  Rylstone^  who  vainly  and  sorrowfully  strove 
against  all  the  new  national  elements.  Robert  South- 
well, of  Norfolk,  a  Jesuit  priest,  was  the  poet  of 
Roman  Catholic  England.  Imprisoned  for  three 
years,  racked  ten  times,  and  finally  executed,  he  wrote, 
while  confessor  to  Lady  Arundel,  a  number  of  poems 
published  at  various  intervals  and  finally  collected 
under  the  title,  St.  Peter's  Complaint,  Mary  Magdalen's 
Tears,  with  other  works  of  the  Author,  R.S,  The 
MceonicB,  and  a  short  prose  work  Marie  Magdalen's 
Fufierall  Tears,  became  also  very  popular.  It  marks  not 
only  the  large  Roman  Catholic  element  in  the  country, 


IV.]    LITERATURE   OF  ELIZABETH'S  REIGM,      87 

but  also  the  strange  contrasts  of  the  time  that  eleven 
editions  of  books  with  these  titles  were  published  be- 
tween 1595  and  1609,  at  a  time  when  the  Venus  and 
Adonis  of  Shakspere  led  the  way  for  a  multitude  of 
poems  that  sung  of  love  and  delight  and  England's 
glory. 

65.  The  Love  Poetry. — I  have  called  it  by  this 
name  because  all  its  best  work  (to  be  found  in  the 
first  book  of  Mr.  Palgrave's  ''  Golden  Treasury  ")  is 
almost  limited  to  that  subject — the  subject  of  youth. 
It  is  chiefly  composed  in  the  form  of  songs  and  sonnets, 
and  much  of  it  was  published  in  miscellanies  in  and 
after  1600.  The  most  famous  of  these,  in  which 
men  like  Nicholas  Breton,  Henry  Constable,  Richard 
Barnefield  and  others  wrote,  are  England's  Helicon^ 
and  Davison's  Rhapsody  and  the  Passionate  Pilgmn, 
The  best  of  the  songs  are  '^  old  and  plain,  and 
dallying  with  the  innocence  of  love,"  childlike  in 
their  natural  sweetness  and  freshness,  but  full  also 
of  a  southern  ardour  of  passion  when  they  treat  of 
love.  The  greater  part  however  have  the  intemperance 
as  well  as  the  phantasy  of  a  youthful  poetry.  Shak 
spere's  excel  the  others  in  their  firm  reality,  their  ex- 
quisite ease,  and  when  in  the  plays,  gain  a  new  beauty 
from  their  fitness  to  their  dramatic  place.  Others 
possess  a  quaint  pastoralism  like  shepherd  life  in  por- 
celain, such  as  Marlowe's  well-known  song,  *^  Come 
live  with  me,  and  be  my  love ; "  others  a  splendour  of 
love  and  beauty  as  in  Lodge's  Song  of  Rosaline,  and 
Spenser's  on  his  marriage.  The  sonnets  were  written 
chiefly  in  series,  and  I  have  already  said  that  such 
writers  are  called  amourists.  Such  were  Shakspere's 
'and  the  Amoretti  of  Spenser,  and  those  to  Diana  by 
Constable.  They  were  sometimes  mixed  with  Can- 
zones and  Ballatas  after  the  Italian  manner,  and  the 
best  of  them  were  a  series  by  Sir  PhiUp  Sidney. 
A  number  of  other  sonnets  and  of  longer  love  poems 
were  written  by  the  dramatists  before  Shakspere,  by 


88*  ENGLISH  LITERATURE,  [chap. 

Peele  and  Greene  and  Marlowe  and  Lodge,  far  the 
finest  being  the  Hero  and  Leander,  which  Marlowe 
left  as  a  fragment  to  be  completed  by  Chapman. 
Mingled  up  with  these  were  small  religious  poems,  the 
reflection  of  the  Puritan  and  the  more  religious  Church 
element  in  English  society.  They  were  collected 
under  such  titles  as  the  handful  of  Honeysuckles^  the 
Foot  Widow's  Mite,  Psalms  and  Sonnets^  and  there  are 
some  good  things  among  them  written  by  William 
Hunnis. 

In  one  Scotch  poet,  William  Drummond  of  Haw- 
thornden,  the  friend  of  Ben  Jonson,  the  love  poet  and 
the  religious  poet  were  united.  I  mention  him  here, 
though  his  work  properly  belongs  to  the  reign  of 
James  I.,  because  his  poetry  really  goes  back  in  spirit 
and  feehng  to  this  time.  He  cannot  be  counted 
among  the  true  Scottish  poets.  Drummond  is 
EUzabethan  and  English,  and  he  is  worthy  to  be 
named  among  the  lyrical  poets  below  Spenser  and 
Shakspere.  His  love  sonnets  have  some  of  the  grace 
of  Sidney's,  and  less  quaintness  ;  his  songs  have  often 
the  grave  simplicity  of  Wyat,  and  his  religious  poems, 
especially  one  solemn  sonnet  on  John  the  Baptist, 
have  a  distant  resemblance  to  the  grandeur  of  Milton. 

66.  The  Patriotic  Poets. — Among  all  this  podtry 
of  Romance,  Chivalry,  Religion,  and  Love,  rose  a 
poetry  which  devoted  itself  to  the  glory  of  England. 
It  was  chiefly  historical,  and  as  it  may  be  said  to  have 
had  its  germ  in  the  Mirror  of  Magistrates,  so  it  had 
its  perfect  flower  in  the  historical  drama  of  Shak- 
spere. Men  had  now  begun  to  have  a  great  pride 
in  England.  She  had  stepped  into  the  foremost  rank, 
had  outwitted  France,  subdued  internal  foes,  beaten 
and  humbled  Spain  on  every  sea.  Hence  the  history 
of  the  land  became  precious,  and  the  very  rivers  and 
.hills  and  plains  honourable,  and  to  be  sung  and  praised 
in  verse.  This  poetic  impulse  is  best  represented  in 
the  works  of  three  men — William  Warner,  Samuel 


IV.]    LITERATURE   OF  ELIZABETH'S  REIGN,      89 

Daniel,  and  Michael  Drayton.  Born  within  a  few 
years  of  each  other,  about  1560,  they  all  Uved  beyond 
the  century,  and  the  national  poetry  they  set  on  foot 
lasted  when  the  romantic  poetry  died. 

William  Warner's  great  book  was  Albion s  England, 
1586,  a  history  of  England  in  verse  from  the  Deluge 
to  Queen  Elizabeth.  It  is  clever,  humorous,  crowded 
with  stories,  and  runs  to  10,000  lines.  Its  popularity 
was  great,  and  the  English  in  which  it  was  written 
deserved  it.  Such  stories  as  Argentile  and  Curan,  and 
the  Patient  CountesSy  prove  him  to  have  had  a  true 
and  pathetic  vein  of  poetry.  His  English  is  not  how- 
ever better  than  that  of  **welManguaged  Daniel,"  who, 
among  tragedies  and  pastoral  comedies,  some  noble 
sonnets  and  pojms  of  pure  fancy,  wrote  in  verse  a  pro- 
saic History  of  the  Civil  Wars,  15  95-  Spenser  saw  in 
him  a  new  *'  shepherd  "  of  poetry  who  did  far  surpass 
the  others,  and  Coleridge  says  that  the  style  of  his 
Hymen^s  Triumph  may  be  declared  **  imperishable 
EngHsh."  Of  the  three  the  greatest  poet  was  Drayton. 
Two  historical  poems  are  his  work — \\\q  Civil  Wars 
of  Edward  II,  and  the  Barons,  and  England' s  Heroical 
Epistles,  1598.  Not  content  with  these,  he  set  him- 
self to  glorify  the  whole  of  his  land  in  the  Folyolbion, 
thirty  books,  and  nearly  100,000  lines.  It  is  a  de- 
scription in  Alexandrines  of  the  "tracts,  mountains, 
forests,  and  other  parts  of  this  renowned  isle  of 
Britain,  with  intermixture  of  the  most  remarkable 
stories,  antiquities,  wonders,  pleasures,  and  commo- 
dities of  the  same,  digested  into  a  poem."  It  was 
not  a  success,  though  it  deserved  success.  Its  great 
length  was  against  it,  but  the  real  reason  was  that  this 
kind  of  poetry  had  had  its  day.  It  appeared  in  16 13, 
in  James  I.'s  reign. 

67.  Philosophical  Poets. — Before  that  time  a 
change  had  come.  As  the  patriotic  poets  came 
after  the  romantic,  so  the  romantic  were  followed 
by  the  philosophical  poets.     The  land  was  settled; 


90  ENGLISH  LITERATURE,  ichap. 

enterprise  ceased  to  be  the  first  thing ;  men  sat  down 
to  think,  and  in  poetry  questions  of  religious  and 
political  philosophy  were  treated  with  "sententious 
reasoning,  grave,  subtle,  and  condensed."  Shakspere, 
in  his  passage  from  comedy  to  tragedy,  in  1601,  illus- 
trates this  change.  The  two  poets  who  represent  it 
are  Sir  Jno.  Davies  and  Fulke  Greville,  Lord 
Brooke.  In  Davies  himself  we  find  an  instance  of  it. 
His  earlier  poem  of  the  Orchestra,  1596,  in  which  the 
whole  world  is  explained  as  a  dance,  is  as  exultant 
as  Spenser.  His  later  poem,  1599,  is  compact  and 
vigorous  reasoning,  for  the  most  part  without  fancy. 
Its  very  title,  Nosce  te  tpsum  ^Yjaow  Thyself— and  its 
divisions,  i.  **  On  humane  learning,"  2.  ''The  im- 
mortality of  the  soul " — mark  the  alteration.  Two 
little  poems,  one  of  Bacon's,  on  the  Life  of  Man,  as  a 
bubble,  and  one  of  Sir  Henry  Wotton  s,  on  the 
Character  of  a  Happy  Life,  are  instances  of  the  same 
change.  It  is  still  more  marked  in  Lord  Brooke's 
long,  obscure  poems  On  Hunian  Learning,  on  Wars, 
on  Monarchy,  and  on  Religion.  They  are  political  and 
historical  treatises,  not  poems,  and  all  in  them,  says 
Lamb,  "is  made  frozen  and  rigid  by  intellect."  Apart 
from  poetry,  "  they  are  worth  notice  as  an  indication 
of  that  thinking  spirit  on  political  science  which  was 
to  produce  the  riper  speculations  of  Hobbes,  Har- 
rington, and  Locke."  We  turn  now  to  the  Drama, 
whicn  includes  all  these  different  forms  of  poetry. 


the  drama. 

6^.  Early  Dramatic  Representation  in  Eng 
land. — The  drama,  as  in  Greece,  so  in  England,  began 
in  religion.  In  early  times  none  but  the  clergy  could 
read  the  stories  of  their  religion,  and  it  was  not  the 
custom  to  deliver  sermons  to  the  people.  It  was  neces- 
sary to  instruct  uneducated  men  in  the  history  of  the 


IVc]  THE  ENGLISH  DRAMA,  91 

Bible,  the  Christian  faith,  the  lives  of  the  Saints  and 
Martyrs.  Hence  the  Church  set  on  foot  miracle  plays 
and  mysteries.  We  find  these  first  in  England  about 
mo,  when  Geofirey,  afterwards  Abbot  of  St.  Alban's, 
prepared  his  miracle  play  of  St.  Catherine  for  acting. 
Such  plays  became  more  frequent  from  the  time  of 
Henry  11.,  and  they  were  so  common  in  Chaucer's 
days  that  they  were  the  resort  of  idle  gossips  in  Lent. 
The  wife  of  Bath  went  to  **  plays  of  miracles,  and 
marriages."  They  were  acted  not  only  by  the  clergy, 
but  by  the  laity.  About  the  year  1268  the  town  guilds 
began  to  take  them  into  their  own  hands,  and  acted 
complete  sets  of  plays,  setting  forth  the  whole  of 
Scripture  history  from  the  Creation  to  the  Day  of 
Judgment.  Each  guild  took  one  play  in  the  set. 
They  lasted  sometimes  three  days,  sometimes  eight, 
and  were  represented  on  a  great  movable  stage  on 
wheels  in  the  open  spaces  of  the  towns.  Of  these 
sets  we  have  three  remaining,  the  Towneley,  Coventry, 
and  Chester  plays:  1300  — 1600.  The  first  set  has 
32,  the  second  42,  and  the  third  25  plays. 

69.  The  Miracle  Play  was  a  representation  of 
some  portion  of  Scripture  history,  or  of  the  life  of 
some  Saint  of  the  Church.  The  Mystery  was  a 
representation  of  any  portion  of  the  New  Testament 
history  concerned  with  a  mysterious  subject,  such  as 
the  Incarnation,  the  Atonement  or  the  Resurrection. 
It  has  been  attempted  to  distinguish  these  more  par- 
ticularly, but  they  are  mingled  together  in  England 
into  one.  From  the  towns  they  went  to  the  court 
and  the  houses  of  nobles.  The  Kings  kept  players 
of  them,  and  we  know  that  exhibiting  Scripture  plays 
at  great  festivals  was  part  of  the  domestic  regulations 
of  the  great  houses,  and  that  it  was  the  Chaplain's 
business  to  write  them.  Their  *^  Dumb  Show  "  and 
their  "  Chorus  "  leave  their  trace  in  the  regular  drama. 
We  cannot  say  that  the  modern  drama  arose  after 
them,  for  it  came  in  before  they  died  out  in  England, 


92  ENGLISH  LITERATURE,  [chap. 

They  were  still  acted  in  Chester  in  1577,  and  in 
Coventry  in  1580. 

70.  The  Morality  was  the  next  step  to  these,  and 
in  it  we  come  to  a  representation  which  is  closely 
connected  with  the  drama.     It  was  a  play  in  which 

,the  characters  were  the  Vices  and  Virtues,  with  the 
1  addition  afterwards  of  allegorical  personages,  such  as 
Riches,  Good  Deeds,  Confession,  Death,  and  any 
human  condition  or  quality  needed  for  the  play. 
These  characters  were  brought  together  in  a  rough 
story,  at  the  end  of  which  Virtue  tiiumphed,  or  some 
moral  principle  was  established.  The  later  dramatic/^<?/ 
grew  up  in  the  Moralities  out  of  a  personage  called 
"  The  Vice,"  and  the  humorous  element  was  intro- 
duced by  the  retaining  of  "  The  Devil "  from  the 
Miracle  play  and  by  making  the  Vice  torment  him. 
They  were  contiunally  represented,  but  finally  died  out 
about  the  end  of  Elizabeth's  reign. 

71.  The  Transition  between  these  and  the 
regular  Drama  may  possibly  be  traced  in  this  way. 
The  Virtues  and  Vices  were  dull  because  they  stirred 
no  human  sympathy.  Historical  characters  were 
therefore  then  introduced,  who  were  celebrated  for  a 
virtue  or  a  vice;  Brutus  represented  patriotism, 
Aristides  represented  justice ;  or,  as  in  Bale's  Kynge 
Johan,  historical  and  allegorical  personages  were  mixed 
together.  But  it  seems  best  to  say  that  the  regular 
drama  arose  independently,  as  soon  as  the  English 
had  classical  and  Italian  models  to  work  from.  Still, 
there  was  a  transition  of  some  kind,  and  it  was  hastened 
by  the  impulse  of  the  Reformation.  The  religious 
struggle  came  so  home  to  men's  hearts  that  they  were 
not  satisfied  with  subjects  drawn  from  the  past,  and 
the  Morality  was  used  to  support  the  Catholic  or  the 
Protestant  side.  Real  men  and  women  were  shown 
under  the  thin  cloaks  of  its  allegorical  characters  ;  the 
vices  and  the  follies  of  the  time  were  displayed.  It 
started  our  satiric  comedy.     The  stage  was  becoming 


IV.]  THE  ENGLISH  DRAMA,  93 

a  living  power  when  this  began.  The  excitement  of  the 
audience  was  now  very  different  from  that  felt  in  Hsten- 
ing  to  Virtues  and  Vices,  and  a  demand  arose  for  a 
comedy  and  tragedy  which  should  picture  human  life 
in  all  its  forms.  The  Interludes  of  John  Heywood, 
most  of  which  were  written  for  court  representation 
in  Henry  VIII.'s  time— 1530,  1540— represent  this 
further  transition.  They  differed  from  the  Morality 
in  that  most  of  the  characters  were  drawn  from  real 
life,  but  they  retained  "  the  Vice "  as  a  personage. 
The  Interlude — a  short,  humorous  piece,  to  be  acted 
in  the  midst  of  the  Morality  for  the  amusement  of 
the  people — had  been  frequently  used,  but  Heywood 
isolated  it  from  the  Morality  and  made  of  it  a  kind  of 
farce.     Out  of  it  we  may  say  grew  English  comedy. 

72.  The  First  Stage  of  the  regular  Drama 
begins  with  the  first  English  comedy,  Ralph  Roister 
Bolster^  written  by  Nicholas  Udall,  master  of  Eton, 
known  to  have  been  acted  before  155 1,  but  not  pub- 
lished till  1566.  It  is  our  earliest  picture  of  London 
manners ;  the  characters  are  well  drawn  ;  it  is  divided 
into  regular  acts  and  scenes,  and  is  made  in  rime. 
The  first  English  tragedy  is  Gorbodiic,  or  Fen-ex  and 
Porrex,  written  by  Sackville  and  Norton,  and  repre- 
sented in  1562.  The  story  was  taken  from  British 
legend,  and  the  characters  are  gravely  sustained.  But 
the  piece  was  heavy  and  too  solemn  for  the  audience, 
and  Richard  Edwards,  by  mixing  tragic  and  comic 
elements  together  in  his  play,  Damon  and  Pythias^ 
acted  about  1564,  succeeded  better.  These  two  gave 
the  impulse  to  a  number  of  dramas  from  classical  and 
modern  story,  which  were  acted  at  the  Universities, 
Inns  of  Court,  and  the  court  up  to  1580,  when  the 
drama,  having  gone  through  its  boyhood,  entered  on 
a  vigorous  manhood.  More  than  fifty- two  dramas,  so 
quick  was  their  production,  are  known  to  have  been 
acted  up  to  this  time.  Some  were  translated  from  the 
-Greek,  as  Xkvo.  Jo  casta  from  Euripides,  and  others  from 


94  ENGLISH  LITER  A  TURE.  [chap. 

the  Italian,  as  the  Supposes  from  Ariosto,  both  by  the 
same  author,  George  Gascoigne,  already  mentioned 
as  a  satirist.  These  were  acted  in  1566.  ItaHan 
stories  were  soon  taken  as  subjects,  one  example  of 
which  is  Arthur  Brooke's  Romeo  and  Juliet,  The 
Chronicle  Histories  of  England  afforded  other  tragic 
subjects,  as  T.  Hughes'  Misfortunes  of  Arthur^  and  the 
Famous  Victories  of  Henry  V, ;  and  Comedy,  falling 
in  with  classical  and  Italian  plays,  such  as  the 
Supposes,  rapidly  developed  itself. 

73.  The  Theatre. — There  was  as  yet  no  theatre. 
A  patent  was  given  in  1574  to  the  Earl  of  Leicester's 
servants  to  act  plays  in  any  town  in  England,  and 
they  built  in  1576  the  Blackfriars  Theatre.  In  the 
same  year  two  others  were  set  up  in  the  fields  about 
Shoreditch— "  The  Theatre"  and  "The  Curtain.'' 
The  Globe  Theatre,  built  for  Shakspere  and  his 
fellows  in  1599,  may  stand  as  a  type  of  the  rest. 
In  the  form  of  a  hexagon  outside,  it  was  circular 
within,  and  open  to  the  weather,  except  above  the 
stage.  The  play  began  at  three  o'clock  ;  the  nobles 
and  ladies  sat  in  boxes  or  in  stools  on  the  stage,  the 
people  stood  in  the  pit  or  yard.  The  stage  itself, 
strewn  with  rushes,  was  a  naked  room,  with  a  blanket 
for  a  curtain.  Wooden  imitations  of  animals,  towers, 
woods,  &c.,  were  all  the  scenery  used,  and  a  board, 
stating  the  place  of  action,  was  hung  out  from  the  top 
when  the  scene  changed.  Boys  acted  the  female 
parts.  It  was  only  after  the  Restoration  that  moveable 
scenery  and  actresses  were  introduced.  No  "  pencil's 
aid  "  supplied  the  landscape  of  Shakspere's  plays.  The 
forest  of  Arden,  the  castle  of  Duncan,  were  "  seen 
only  by  the  intellectual  eye." 

74.  The  Second  Stage  of  the  Drama  ranges 
from  1580  to  1596.  It  includes  the  work  of  Lyly 
(author  of  the  Fuphues),  the  plays  of  Peele,  Greene, 
Lodge,  Marlowe,  Kyd,  Munday,  Chettle,  Nash,  and 
the  earliest  works  of  Shakspere.     During  this  time 


IV.]  THE  ENGLISH  DRAMA.  95 

we  know  that  more  than  100  different  plays  were  per- 
formed by  four  out  of  the  eleven  companies ;  so  swift 
and  plentiful  was  their  production.  They  were  written 
in  prose,  and  in  rime,  and  in  blank  verse  mixed  with 
prose  and  rime.  Prose  and  rime  prevailed  before 
1587,  when  Marlowe  in  his  play  of  Tamburlaine  made 
blank  verse  the  fashion.  John  Lyly  illustrates  the 
three  methods,  for  he  wrote  seven  plays  in  prose,  one 
in  rime,  and  one  (after  Tamburlaine)  in  blank  verse. 
We  may  say  that,  in  "  adopting  Gascoigne's  innovation 
of  writing  plays  in  prose,  he  did  his  best  service  to 
dramatic  literature."  Some  beautiful  little  songs  scat- 
tered through  them  are  the  forerunners  of  the  songs 
with  which  Shakspere  illumined  his  dramas,  and  the 
witty  *^  quips  and  cranks,"  repartees  and  similes  of 
their  fantastic  prose  dialogue  were  the  school  of 
Shakspere's  prose  dialogue.  Peele,  Greene,  and 
Marlowe  are  the  three  important  names  of  the 
period.  They  are  the  first  in  whose  hands  the  play 
of  human  passion  and  action  is  expressed  with  any 
true  dramatic  effect.  Peele  and  Greene  make  their 
characters  act  on,  and  draw  out,  one  another  in  the 
several  scenes,  but  they  have  no  power  of  making  a 
plot,  or  of  working  out  their  plays,  scene  by  scene,  to 
a  natural  conclusion.  They  are,  in  one  word,  without 
art,  and  their  characters,  even  when  they  talk  in  good 
poetry,  are  neither  natural  nor  simple.  Yet,  he  would 
be  unwise,  and  would  lose  much  pleasure,  who  should 
not  read  their  works. 

Christopher  Marlowe,  on  the  other  hand,  rose 
by  degrees  and  easily  into  mastery  of  his  art.  The 
difference  between  the  unequal  and  violent  action 
and  thought  of  his  Doctor  Faustus^  and  the  quiet 
and  orderly  progression  to  its  end  of  the  play  of 
Edward  II.,  is  all  the  more  remarkable  when  we 
know  that  he  died  at  thirty.  Though  less  than 
Shakspere,  he  was  worthy  to  precede  him.  As  he 
mav  be  said  to  have  invented  and  made  the  verse  of 


96  ENGLISH  LITER  A  TURE.  [chap. 

the  drama,  so  he  created  the  EngHsh  tragic  drama. 
His  plays  are  wrought  with  skill  to  their  end,  his 
characters  are  sharply  and  strongly  outlined.  Each 
play  illustrates  one  ruling  passion,  in  its  growth,  its 
power,  and  its  extremes.  Tamburlaine  paints  the 
desire  of  universal  empire ;  the  Jew  of  Malta ^  the 
passions  of  greed  and  hatred ;  Doctor  Fausttis,  the 
struggle  and  failure  of  man  to  possess  all  knowledge 
and  all  pleasure  without  toil  and  without  law ; 
Edward  J  I.,  the  misery  of  weakness  and  the  agony 
of  a  king's  ruin.  Marlowe's  verse  is  ''mighty,"  his 
poetry  strong  and  weak  alike  with  passionate  feeling, 
and  overwrought  into  an  intemperate  magnificence  of 
words  and  images.  It  reflects  his  life  and  the  lives  of 
those  with  whom  he  wrote.  Marlowe  lived  and  died  an 
irreligious,  imaginative,  tender-hearted,  licentious  poet. 
Peele  and  Greene  lived  an  even  more  riotous  life  and 
died  as  miserably,  and  they  are  examples  of  a  crowd 
of  other  dramatists  who  passed  their  lives  between  the 
theatre,  the  wine-shop,  and  the  prison.  Their  drama, 
in  which  we  see  the  better  side  of  the  men,  had  all  the 
marks  of  a  wild  youth.  It  was  daring,  full  of  strong 
but  unequal  life,  romantic,  sometimes  savage,  often 
tender,  always  exaggerated  in  its  treatment  and  ex- 
pression of  the  human  passions.  If  it  had  no  modera- 
tion, it  had  no  tame  dulness.  If  it  was  coarse,  it  was 
powerful,  and  it  was  above  all  national.  It  was  a 
time  full  of  strange  contrasts,  a  time  of  fiery  action 
and  of  sentimental  contemplation;  a  time  of  fancy 
and  chivalry,  indelicacy  and  buffoonery ;  of  great 
national  adventure  and  private  brawls,  of  literary 
quiet  and  polemic  thought ;  of  faith  and  infidelity — 
and  the  whole  of  it  is  painted  with  truth,  but  with  too 
glaring  colours,  in  the  drama  of  these  men. 

75.  William  Shakspere,  the  greatest  dramatist 
of  the  world,  now  took  up  the  work  of  Marlowe,  and 
in  twenty-eight  years  made  the  drama  represent  the 
whole  of  human  life.     He  was  baptised  April  26,  1564, 


IV.]  THE  EJVGLTSH  DRAMA.  97 

and  was  the  son  of  a  comfortable  burgess  of  Stratford- 
on-Avon.  While  he  was  still  young  his  father  fell 
into  poverty,  and  an  interrupted  education  left  him 
an  inferior  scholar.  ^'  He  had  small  Latin  and  less 
Greek  ;"  but  he  had  vast  store  of  English.^ 

By  dint  then  of  genius  and  by  living  in  a  society  in 
which  every  kind  of  information  was  attainable,  he 
became  an  accomplished  man.  The  story  told  of  his 
deer-stealing  in  Charlecote  woods  is  without  proof,  but 
it  is  likely  that  his  youth  was  wild  and  passionate.  At 
nineteen  he  married  Anne  Hathaway,  more  than  seven 
years  older  than  himself,  and  was  probably  unhappy 
with  her.  For  this  reason,  or  from  poverty,  or  from  the 
driving  of  the  genius  that  led  him  to  the  stage,  he  left 
Stratford  about  1586-7,  and  came  to  London  at  the 
age  of  twenty-two  years,  and  falling  in  with  Marlowe, 
Greene,  and  the  rest,  became  an  actor  and  play- 
wright, and  may  have  lived  their  unrestrained  and 
riotous  life  for  some  years. 

76.  His  First  Period.— It  is  probable  that  before 
leaving  Stratford  he  had  sketched  a  part  at  least  of 
his  Venus  and  Adonis,  It  is  full  of  the  country  sights 
and  sounds,  of  the  ways  of  birds  and  animals,  such 
as  he  saw  when  wandering  in  Charlecote  woods.  Its 
rich  and  overladen  poetry  and  its  warm  colouring 
made  him,  when  it  was  published,  159 1-3,  at  once 
the  favourite  of  men  like  Lord  Southampton  and 
lifted  him  into  fame.  But  before  that  date  he  had 
done  work  for  the  stage  by  touching  up  old  plays,  and 
writing  new  ones.  We  seem  to  trace  his  '*  prentice 
hand  "  in  many  dramas  of  the  time,  but  the  first  he  is 
usually  thought  to  have  retouched  is  Titus  AndroJticus, 
and  some  time  after  the  First  Part  of  Henry  VI. 
Love's  Labour's  Lost^  the  first  of  his  original  plays,  in 

•^  He  u?es  15,000  words,  and  he  wrote  pure  En^rlish,  Out  of 
every  five  verns,  adverb>,  and  n  >uns  [e.t^.  in  ihe  last  aci  of 
Othelh)  four  are  Teutonic;  and  he  is  more  leutonic  in  comedy 
than  in  tragedy. 


98  ENGLISH  LITERATURE.  [chap. 

which  he  quizzed  and  excelled  the  Euphuists  in  wit,  was 
followed  by  the  involved  and  rapid  farce  of  the  Comedy 
of  Errors.  Out  of  these  frolics  of  intellect  and  action 
he  passed  into  pure  poetry  in  the  Midsummer- Nighf s 
Dreain^  and  mingled  into  fantastic  beauty  the  classic 
legend,  the  mediaeval  fairyland,  and  the  clownish  life 
of  the  English  mechanic.  Italian  story  then  laid  its 
charm  upon  him,  and  the  Two  Gentleinen  of  Verona 
preceded  the  southern  glow  of  passion  in  Ro7neo  and 
Juliet,  in  which  he  first  reached  tragic  power.  They 
complete,  with  Love's  Labour'' s  PVon,  afterwards  recast 
as  A/fs  Well  that  Ends  Well,  the  love  plays  of  his 
early  period.  We  may  perhaps  add  to  them  the 
second  act  of  an  older  play,  Edward  ILL  We  should 
certainly  read  along  with  them,  as  belonging  to  the 
same  period,  his  Rape  of  Lucrece,  a  poem  finally  printed 
in  1594,  one  year  later  than  the  Venus  and  Adonis, 
which  was  probably  finished,  if  not  wholly  written,  at 
this  passionate  time. 

The  same  poetic  succession  we  have  traced  in  the 
poets  is  now  found  in  Shakspere.  The  patriotic  feel- 
ing of  England,  also  represented  in  Marlowe  and 
Peele,  now  seized  on  him,  and  he  turned  from  love 
to  begin  his  great  series  of  historical  plays  with 
Richard  11.^  1593 — 4-  Richard  III.  followed  quickly. 
To  introduce  it  and  to  complete  the  subject,  he  re- 
cast the  Second  and  Third  Parts  of  Henry  VL.  (written 
by  some  unknown  authors)  and  ended  his  first  period 
by  X^'ng  John ;  five  plays  in  a  little  more  than  two 
years. 

77.  His  Second  Period,  1596 — 1601. — In  the 
Merchant  of  Venice  Shakspere  reached  entire  mastery 
over  his  art.  A  mingled  woof  of  tragic  and  comic 
threads  is  brought  to  its  highest  point  of  colour  when 
Portia  and  Shylock  meet  in  court.  Pure  comedy  fol- 
lowed in  his  retouch  of  the  old  Taming  of  the  Shrew, 
and  all  the  wit  of  the  world  mixed  with  noble  history 
met  next  in  the  three  comedies  of  Falstaff,  the  first 


IV.]  THE  ENGLISH  DRAMA.  99 

and  second  Henry  IV.  and  the  Merry  Wives  of  Wind- 
sor. The  historical  plays  were  then  closed  with 
Henry  V. ;  a  splendid  dramatic  song  to  the  glory  of 
England.  The  Globe  Theatre,  in  which  he  was  one  of 
the  proprietors,  was  built  in  1599.  In  the  comedies 
he  wrote  for  it,  Shakspere  turned  to  write  of  love 
again,  not  to  touch  its  deeper  passion  as  before,  but 
to  play  with  it  in  all  its  lighter  phases.  The  flashing 
dialogue  of  Much  Ado  About  Nothing  was  followed 
by  the  far-off  forest  world  of  As  You  Like  It^  where 
•*Uhe  time  fleets  carelessly,''  and  Rosalind's  character 
is  the  play.  Amid  all  its  gracious  lightness  steals  in 
a  new  element,  and  the  melancholy  of  Jaques  is  the 
first  touch  we  have  of  the  older  Shakspere  who  had 
**  gained  his  experience,  and  whose  experience  had 
made  him  sad."  As  yet  it  was  but  a  touch  ;  Twelfth 
Night  shows  no  trace  of  it,  though  the  play  that  fol- 
lowed, Airs  Well  that  Ends  Well,  again  strikes  a 
sadder  note.  We  find  this  sadness  fully  grown  in  the 
later  Sonnets,  which  are  said  to  have  been  finished 
about  1602.  We  know  that  some  of  the  Son7icts  ex- 
isted in  1598,  but  they  were  all  printed  together  for 
the  first  time  in  i6o9> 

Shakspere's  life  changed  now,  and  his  mind 
changed  with  it.  He  had  grown  wealthy  during  this 
period,  famous,  and  loved  by  society.  He  was  the 
friend  of  the  Earls  of  Southampton  and  Essex,  and  of 
William  Herbert,  Lord  Pembroke.  The  Queen  pa- 
tronised him  ;  all  the  best  literary  society  was  his  own. 
He  had  rescued  his  father  from  poverty,  bought  the 
best  house  in  Stratford  and  much  land,  and  was  a 
man  of  wealth  and  comfort.  Suddenly  all  his  life 
seems  to  have  grown  dark.  His  best  friends  fell  into 
ruin,  Essex  perished  on  the  scaffold,  Southampton 
went  to  the  Tower,  Pembroke  was  banished  from  the 
court ;  he  may  himself,  as  some  have  thought,  have 
been  concerned  in  the  rising  of  Essex.  Added  to  this, 
-  we  may  conjecture,   from  the  imaginative  pageantry 


loo  ENGLISH  LITERATURE,  [chap. 

of  the  sonnets,  that  he  had  unwisely  loved,  and  been 
betrayed  in  his  love  by  a  dear  friend.  Disgust  of  his 
profession  as  an  actor  and  public  and  private  ill 
weighed  heavily  on  him,  and  in  darkness  of  spirit, 
though  still  chnging  to  the  business  of  the  theatre,  he 
passed  from  comeciy  to  write  of  the  sterner  side  of  the 
world,  to  tell  the  tragedy  of  mankind. 

78. —  His  Third  Period,  1601-1608,  begins  with 
the  last  days  of  Queen  Elizabeth.  It  opens,  1601,  with 
Julius  Ccesar,  and  we  may  have,  scattered  through  the 
telHng  of  the  great  Roman's  fate,  the  expression  of 
Shakspere's  sorrow  for  the  ruin  of  Essex.  Hamlet  fol- 
lowed, for  the  poet  felt,  like  the  Prince  of  Denmark, 
that  "  the  time  was  out  of  joint."  Hamlet,  the  dreamer, 
may  well  represent  Shakspere  as  he  stood  aside  from 
the  crash  that  overwhelmed  his  friends,  and  thought 
on  the  changing  world.  The  tragi-comedy  of  Afeasure 
for  AUasure  was  next  written,  and  is  tragic  in  thought 
throughout.  Othello,  Matbeth,  Lear,  Troilus  and 
Cressida  (finished  from  an  incomplete  work  of  his 
youth),  Antony  and  Cleopatra,  Loriolanus,  Tinion 
(only  in  part  his  own),  were  all  written  in  these  five 
years.  The  darker  sins  of  men,  the  unpitying  fate 
which  slowly  gathers  round  and  falls  on  men,  the 
avenging  wrath  of  conscience,  the  cruelty  and  punish- 
ment of  weakness,  the  treachery,  lust,  jealousy,  in- 
gratitude, madness  of  men,  the  follies  of  the  great 
and  the  fickleness  of  the  mob,  are  all,  with  a  thousand 
other  varying  moods  and  passions,  painted,  and  felt 
as  his  own  while  he  painted  them,  during  this  stern 
time. 

79.  His  Fourth  Period,  1608-1613. — As  Shak 
spere  wrote  of  these  things  he  passed  out  of  them, 
and  his  last  days  are  full  of  the  gentle  and  loving 
calm  of  one  who  has  known  sin  and  sorrow  and  fate, 
but  has  risen  above  them  into  peaceful  victory.  Like 
his  great  contemporary  Bacon,  he  left  the  world  and 
his  own   evil    time  behind  him,  and  with  the  same 


IV.]  THE  ENGLISH  DRAMA.  loi 

quiet  dignity  sought  the  innocence  and  stillness  of 
country  life.  The  country  breathes  through  all  the 
dramas  of  this  time.  The  flowers  Perdita  gathers  in 
Winters  Tale,  the  froHc  of  the  sheep-shearing,  he 
may  have  seen  in  the  Stratford  meadows ;  the  song  of 
Fidele  in  Cymbeline  is  written  by  one  who  already 
feared  no  more  the  frown  of  the  great,  nor  slander, 
nor  censure  rash,  and  was  looking  forward  to  the  time 
when  men  should  say  of  him — 

"  Quiet  consummation  have  ; 

And  renowned^  b^  |hy  ^rave  !  "    ,  > ,   ^  > , 

Shakspere  probably  left.  London  in  1609, 'arid  lived 
in  the  house  he  had  bcyugHt  ^t>IStmtfGrr^'-dr.:-Avon. 
He  was  reconciled,  it  is  said,  X6  hi"s  wile;  arfd  the  plays 
now  written  dwell  on  domestic  peace  and  forgiveness. 
The  story  of  Marina,  which  he  left  unfinished,  and 
which  two  later  writers  expanded  into  the  play  of 
Pericles,  is  the  first  of  his  closing  series  of  dramas. 
The  Tempest,  Cymbeline,  Winter's  Tale,  bring  his 
history  up  to  16 12,  and  in  the  next  year  he  closed  his 
poetic  life  by  writing,  with  Fletcher,  Henry  VIII. 
The  T7£)o  Noble  Kinsmen  of  Fletcher,  a  great  part  of 
which  is  now,  on  doubtful  grounds  I  think,  attributed 
to  Shakspere,  and  in  which  the  poet  sought  the 
inspiration  of  Chaucer,  would  belong  to  this  period. 
For  three  years  he  kept  silence,  and  then,  on  the 
23rd  of  April,  1 61 6,  it  is  supposed  on  his  fifty-second 
birthday,  he  died. 

80.  His  Work. — We  can  only  guess  with  regard 
to  Shakspere's  life ;  we  can  only  guess  with  regard  to 
his  character.  It  has  been  tried  to  find  out  what  he 
was  from  his  sonnets,  and  from  his  plays,  but  every 
attempt  seems  to  be  a  failure.  We  cannot  lay  our 
hand  on  anything  and  say  for  certain  that  it  was 
spoken  by  Shakspere  out  of  his  own  character.  The 
most  personal  thing  in  all  his  writings  is  one  that 
■  has  been  scarcely  noticed.     It  is  the  Epilogue  to  the 


I02  ENGLISH  LITERATURE.  [chap. 

Tempest^  and  if  it  be,  as  is  most  probable,  one  of  the 
last  things  he  ever  wrote,  then  its  cry  for  forgiveness,  its 
tale  of  inward  sorrow  only  to  be  reheved  by  prayer, 
give  us  some  dim  insight  into  how  the  silence  of 
those  three  years  was  passed  ;  while  its  declaration  of 
his  aim  in  writing,  *' which  was  to  please  '^ — the  true 
definition  of  the  artist's  aim,  if  the  pleasure  he  desire 
to  give  be  noble  —  should  make  us  very  cautious 
in  our  efforts  to  define  his  character  from  his  works. 
Shakspere  made  men  and  women  whose  dramatic 
action  on  each  pth^r,  ^n.d.  towards  a  catastrophe,  w^as 
intended  {tQ  please  the*  public,  not  to  reveal  himself. 
Frequently  failing  in  fineness  cf.w^orkmanship,  having, 
but /fat  2^^'.'.t>h^'ii'th(;?  o\hh)\  dramatists,  the  faults  of 
the' art' df  hi's'tmie,  he  was  yet  in  all  other  points — in 
creative  power,  in  impassioned  conception  and  exe- 
cution, in  plenteousness,  in  the  continuance  of  his 
romantic  feeling — the  greatest  artist  the  modern  world 
has  known.  No  commentary  on  his  writings,  no 
guesses  about  his  life  or  character,  are  worth  much 
which  do  not  rest  on  this  canon  as  their  foundation 
— What  he  did,  thought,  learned,  and  felt,  he  did, 
thought,  learned,  and  felt  as  an  artist.  Like  the 
rest  of  the  great  artists,  he  reflected  the  noble 
things  of  his  time,  but  refused  to  reflect  the  base. 
Fully  influenced,  as  we  see  in  Hamlet  he  was,  by 
the  graver  and  more  philosophic  cast  of  thought 
of  the  latter  time  of  Elizabeth;  passing  on  into 
the  reign  of  James  I.,  when  pedantry  took  the 
place  of  gaiety,  and  sensual  the  place  of  imagi- 
native love  in  the  drama,  and  artificial  art  the 
place  of  that  art  which  itself  is  nature  ;  he  preserves 
to  the  last  the  natural  passion,  the  simple  tenderness, 
the  sweetness,  grace,  and  fire  of  the  youthful  Eliza- 
bethan poetry.  The  Winter  s  Tale  is  as  lovely  a  love- 
story  as  Romeo  and  Juliet,  the  Tempest  is  more  instinct 
with  imagination  and  as  great  in  fancy  as  the  Mid- 
siu7imer-Nighfs  Dream,  and  yet  there  are  fully  twenty 


IV.]  THE  ENGLISH  DRAMA.  103 

years  between  them.  The  only  change  is  in  the  in- 
crease of  power  and  in  a  closer  and  graver  grasp  of 
human  nature.  In  the  unchangeableness  of  this  joyful 
and  creative  art-power  Shakspere  is  almost  alone. 
Around  hun  the  whole  tone  and  manner  of  the  drama 
altered  for  the  worse  as  his  life  went  on,  but  his  work 
grew  to  the  close  in  strength  and  beauty. 

81.  The  Decay  of  the  Drama  begins  while 
Shakspere  is  alive.  At  first  one  can  scarcely  call  it 
decay,  it  was  so  magnificent.  For  it  began  with  *^  rare 
Ben  Jonson."  His  first  play,  in  its  very  \i\\q,  Every 
Man  in  his  Humou?',  1596-98,  enables  us  to  say  in 
what  the  first  step  of  this  decay  consisted.  The  drama 
in  Shakspere's  hands  had  been  the  painting  of  the 
whole  of  human  nature,  the  painting  of  characters  as 
they  were  built  up  by  their  natural  bent,  and  by  the 
play  of  circumstance  upon  them.  The  drama,  in  Ben 
Jonson's  hands,  was  the  painting  of  that  particular 
human  nature  which  he  saw  in  his  own  age ;  and  his 
characters  are  not  men  and  women  as  they  are,  but  as 
they  may  become  when  they  are  mastered  by  a  special 
bias  of  the  mind  or  Humour,  **  The  Manners,  now 
called  Humours,  feed  the  Stage,"  says  Jonson  himself. 
Every  Man  in  his  Humo2ir  was  followed  by  Every 
Man  Old  of  his  Humour^  and  by  Cynthia's  Revels, 
written  to  satirise  the  courtiers.  The  fierce  satire  of 
these  plays  brought  the  town  down  upon  him,  and 
he  replied  to  their  "  noise  "  in  the  Poetaster,  in  which 
Dekker  and  Marston  were  satirised.  Dekker  answered 
with  the  Satiro-Mastix,  a  bitter  parody  on  the  Poet- 
aster, in  which  he  did  not  spare  Jonson's  bodily  de- 
fects. The  staring  Leviathan,  as  he  calls  Jonson,  is 
not  a  very  untrue  description.  Silent  then  for  two 
years,  he  reappeared  with  the  tragedy  of  Sejanus,  and 
then  quickly  produced  three  splendid  comedies  in 
James  I.'s  reign,  Volpone  the  Eox,  the  Silent  Wo?nan, 
and  the  Alchemist,  1 605-9-10.  The  first  is  the  finest 
-thing  he  ever  did,  as  great  in  power  as  it  is  in  the 


I04  ENGLISH  LITERATURE,  [chap. 

interest  and  skill  of  its  plot ;  the  second  is  chiefly 
valuable  as  a  picture  of  English  life  in  high  society  \ 
the  third  is  full  to  weariness  of  Jonson's  obscure  learn- 
ing, but  its  character  of  Sir  Epicure  Mammon  redeems 
it.  In  1611  his  Catiline  appeared,  and  eight  years 
after  he  was  made  Poet  Laureate.  Soon  he  became 
poor  and  palsy-stricken,  but  his  genius  did  not  decay. 
The  most  graceful  and  tender  thing  he  ever  wrote 
was  written  in  his  old  age.  His  pastoral  drama  the 
Sad  Shepherd  proves  that,  Uke  Shakspere,  Jonson 
grew  kinder  and  gentler  as  he  grew  near  to  death,  and 
death  took  him  in  1637.  He  was  a  great  man.  The 
power  and  copiousness  of  the  young  Elizabethan  age 
belonged  to  him  \  and  he  stands  far  below,  but  still 
worthily  by,  Shakspere,  "a  robust,  surly,  and  observing 
dramatist." 

82.  Masques. — Rugged  as  Jonson  was,  he  could 
turn  to  light  and  graceful  work,  and  it  is  with  his  name 
that  we  connect  the  Masques,  Masques  wei-e  dramatic 
representations  made  for  a  festive  occasion,  with  a  re- 
ference to  the  persons  present  and  the  occasion.  Their 
personages  were  allegorical.  They  admitted  of  dia- 
logue, music,  singing  and  dancing,  combined  by  the 
use  of  some  ingenious  fable  into  a  whole.  They  were 
made  and  performed  for  the  court  and  the  houses  of 
the  nobles,  and  the  scenery  was  as  gorgeous  and 
varied  as  the  scenery  of  the  playhouse  proper  was 
poor  and  unchanging.  Arriving  for  the  first  time  at 
any  repute  in  Henry  VIH.'s  time,  they  reached  splen- 
dour under  James  and  Charles  I.  Great  men  took 
part  in  them.  When  Ben  Jonson  wrote  them,  Inigo 
Jones  made  the  scenery  and  Lawes  the  music ;  and 
Lord  Bacon,  Whitelock,  and  Selden  sat  in  committee 
for  the  last  great  masque  presented  to  Charles.  Milton 
himself  made  them  worthier  by  writing  Comus^  and 
their  scenic  decoration  was  soon  introduced  into 
tJie  regular  theatres. 

Z^,  Beaumont  and  Fletcher  worked  together, 


IV.]  THE  ENGLISH  DRAMA.  105 

but  out  of  more  than  fifty  plays,  all  written  in  James 
I.'s  reign,  not  more  than  fourteen  were  shared  m  by 
Beaumont,  who  died  at  the  age  of  thirty  in  16 16, 
Fletcher  survived  him,  and  died  in  1625.  Both  were 
of  gentle  birth.  Beaumont,  where  we  can  trace  his 
work,  is  weighter  and  more  dignified  than  his  comrade, 
but  Fletcher  was  the  better  poet.  Their  Fhilaster 
and  Thierry  and  Theodoret  are  fine  examples  of 
their  tragic  power.  Fletcher's  Faithful  Shepherdess 
is  full  of  lovely  poetry,  and  both  are  masters  of  grace 
and  pathos  and  style.  They  enfeebled  the  blank  verse 
of  the  drama  while  they  rendered  it  sweeter  by  using 
feminine  endings  and  adding  an  eleventh  syllable  with 
great  frequency.  This  gave  freedom  and  elasticity  to 
their  verse,  and  was  suited  to  the  dialogue  of  comedy, 
but  it  lowered  the  dignity  of  their  tragedy.  The  two 
men  mark  a  change  in  politics  and  society  from 
Shakspere's  time.  Shakspere's  loyalty  is  constitu- 
tional ;  Beaumont  and  Fletcher  are  blind  supporters 
of  James  I.'s  invention  of  the  divine  right  of  kings. 
Shakspere's  society  w^as  on  the  whole  decent,  and 
it  is  so  in  his  plays.  Beaumont  and  Fletcher  are 
**  studiously  indecent."  In  contrast  to  them  Shak- 
spere  is  as  white  as  snow.  Shakspere's  men  are  of 
the  type  of  Sidney  and  Raleigh,  Burleigh  and  Drake. 
The  men  of  these  two  writers  represent  the  "young 
bloods"  of  the  Stuart  court;  and  even  the  best  of 
their  older  and  graver  men  are  base  and  foul  in  thought. 
Their  women  are  either  monsters  of  badness  or  of 
goodness.  When  they  paint  a  good  woman  (two  or 
three  at  most  being  excepted),  she  is  beyond  nature. 
The  fact  is  that  the  high  art  which  in  Shakspere 
sought  to  give  a  noble  pleasure  by  being  true  to 
human  nature  in  its  natural  aspects,  sank  now  into 
the  baser  art  which  wished  to  excite,  at  any  cost,  the 
passions  of  the  audience  by  representing  human 
nature  m  unnatural  aspects. 

84.  In  Massinger  and  Ford  this  evil  is  just  as 


io6  ENGLISH  LITERATURE,  [chap. 

plainly  marked.  Massinger's  first  dated  play  was  the 
Virgin  Martyr,  1620.  He  lived  poor,  and  died  '*  a 
stranger,"  in  1639.  I^  these  twenty  years  he  wrote 
thirty-seven  plays,  of  which  the  New  Way  to  Pay 
Old  Debts  is  the  best  known  by  its  character  0/ 
Sir  Giles  Overreach.  No  writer  is  fouler  in  language, 
and  there  is  a  want  a  unity  of  impression  both  in  his 
plots  and  in  his  characters.  He  often  sacrifices  art 
to  effect,  and,  *' unlike  Shakspere,  seems  to  despise 
his  own  characters."  On  the  other  hand,  his  versi- 
fication and  language  are  flexible  and  strong,  **and 
seem  to  rise  out  of  the  passions  he  describes." 
He  speaks  the  tongue  of  real  life.  His  men  and 
women  are  far  more  natural  than  those  oi  Beaumont 
and  Fletcher,  and,  with  all  his  coarseness,  he  is  the 
most  moral  of  the  secondary  dramatists.  Nowhere  is 
his  work  so  great  as  when  he  represents  the  brave  man 
struggling  through  trial  to  victory,  the  pure  woman 
suffering  for  the  sake  of  truth  and  love ;  or  when  he 
describes  the  terrors  that  conscience  brings  on  in- 
justice and  cruelty.  John  Ford,  his  contemporary, 
published  his  first  play,  the  Lover's  Melancholy,  in 
1629,  and  five  years  after,  Perkin  Warbeck,  the  best 
historical  drama  after  Shakspere.  Between  these 
dates  appeared  others,  of  which  the  best  is  the  Broken 
Heart.  He  carried  to  an  extreme  the  tendency  of 
the  drama  to  unnatural  and  horrible  subjects,  but  he 
did  so  with  very  great  power.  He  has  no  comic 
humour,  but  no  man  has  described  better  the  worn 
and  tortured  human  heart. 

85.  Webster  and  other  Dramatists. — Higher 
as  a  poet,  and  possessing  the  same  power  as  Ford, 
though  not  the  same  exquisite  tenderness,  was  John 
Webster,  whose  best  drama,  The  Duchess  of  Malfi, 
was  acted  in  16 16.  Vittoria  (7<^;w;2/^^/2^  was  printed  in 
161 2,  and  was  followed  by  the  Devits  Law  Case, 
Appius  and  Virginia,  and  others.  Webster's  peculiar 
power     of    creating     ghastly    horror    is    redeemed 


i\.]  THE  ENGLISH  DRAMA,  107 

from  sensationalism  by  his  poetic  insight.  His 
imagination  easily  saw,  and  expressed  in  short  and 
intense  lines,  the  inmost  thoughts  and  feelings  of 
characters  whom  he  represents  as  wrought  on  by 
misery,  or  crime,  or  remorse,  at  their  very  highest 
point  of  passion.  In  his  worst  characters  there  is  some 
redeeming  touch,  and  this  poetic  pity  brings  him  nearer 
to  Shakspere  than  the  rest.  He  is  also  neither  so 
coarse,  nor  so  great  a  king  worshipper,  nor  so  irreli- 
gious as  the  others.  We  seem  to  taste  the  Puritan  in 
his  work.  Two  comedies,  Wesiivard  Ho  !  and  North- 
ward Ho  !  remarkable  for  the  light  they  throw  on  the 
manners  of  the  time,  were  writen  by  him  along  with 
Thomas  Dekker.  George  Chapman  is  the  only  one 
of  the  later  Elizabethan  dramatists  who  kept  the  old 
fire  of  Marlowe,  though  he  never  had  the  naturalness 
or  temperance  which  lifted  Shakspere  far  beyond 
Marlowe.  The  same  force  which  we  have  seen  in 
his  translation  of  Homer  is  to  be  found  in  his  plays. 
The  mingling  of  intellectual  power  with  imagination, 
violence  of  words  and  images  with  tender  and  natural 
and  often  splendid  passages,  is  entirely  in  the  earlier 
Elizabethan  manner.  Like  Marlowe,  nay,  even  more 
than  Marlowe,  he  is  always  impassioned,  and  **  hurled 
instinctive  fire  about  the  world."  These  were  the 
greatest  names  among  a  crowd  of  dramatists.  We 
can  only  mention  John  Marston,  Henry  Glapthorne, 
Richard  Brome,  William  Rowley,  Thomas  Middleton, 
Cyril  Tourneur,  and  Thomas  Heywood.  Of  these, 
*'all  of  whom,"  says  Lamb,  ^*  spoke  nearly  the 
same  language,  and  had  a  set  of  moral  feelings  and 
notions  in  common,"  James  Shirley  is  the  last. 
He  lived  till  1666.  In  him  the  fire  and  passion 
of  the  old  time  passes  away,  but  some  of  the 
delicate  poetry  remains,  and  in  him  the  Elizabethan 
drama  dies.  In  1642  the  theatres  were  closed  during 
the  calamitous  times  of  the  Civil  War.  Strolling 
players  managed  to  exist  with  difhcnltv,  and  against 

10 


io8  ENGLISH  LITERATURE,  [chap. 

the  law,  till  1656,  when  Sir  William  Davenant  had 
his  opera  of  the  Siege  of  Rhodes  acted  in  London. 
It  was  the  beginning  of  a  new  drama,  in  every  point 
but  impurity  ditlerent  from  the  old,  and  four  years 
after,  at  the  Restoration,  it  broke  loose  from  the  prison 
of  Puritanism  to  indulge  in  a  shameless  license. 

In  this  rapid  sketch  of  the  Drama  in  England  we 
lave  been  carried  on  beyond  the  death  of  Elizabeth 
to  the  date  of  the  Restoration.  It  was  necessary, 
because  it  keeps  the  whole  story  together.  We  now 
return  to  the  time  that  followed  the  accession  of 
James  I. 


CHAPTER  V. 

FROM    ELIZABETH'S    DEATH    TO   THE    RESTORATION. 

1603-1660. 

Lord  Bacon,  Advancement  of  Learning  (two  books),  1605  ; 
expanded  into  nine  Latin  books,  1623  ;  Novu77i  Organon 
(first  sketch),  1607  ;  finished,  1620  :  Historia  Naturalis  et 
Expervnentalis,  1622-  These  three  form  the  Instauratio 
Magna;  last  edition  oi  Essays,  1625;  dies,  1626- — Giles 
Fletcher's  Temptation  of  Christ,  1610-  —  ^ -  Browne's 
Britannia  s  Pastorals,  1613,  16. — I-  Donne's  Poe7ns  and 
Satires,  1613-1635.— G.  Wither,  Poems,  1613-1622-1641. 
— George  Herbert,  Temple,  1631- — Jeremy  Taylor,  Liberty 
of  Prophesying,  1647. — l'^.  Herrick,  Hesperides,  1648 — 
Hobbes'  Leviathan,  1651- — T.  Fuller's  Church  History, 
1656.— J.  Milton,  born  1608  ;  Eirst  Poem,  1626  ;  E Allegro, 
1632  ;  Comus  and  Lycidas,  1634-1637  ;  Prose  writings  and 
most  of  the  Sonnets,  1640*1660  ;  Paradise  Lost,  1667  ; 
Paradise  Regained  diXi^  Samson  A^onistes,  1671*  dies  1674. 
Banyan's  Pilgrifn's  Progress,  1678-1684- 

86.  The  Literature  of  this  Period  may  fairly 
be  called  Elizabethan,  but  not  so  altogether.  The 
Prose  retained  the  manner  of  the  Elizabethan  time  and 


v.]         ELIZABETH  TO  THE  RESTORATION.         109 

the  faults  of  its  style,  but  gradually  grew  into  greater 
excellence,  spread  itself  over  larger  fields  of  thought 
and  took  up  a  greater  variety  of  subjects.  The  Poetry, 
on  the  contrary,  decayed.  It  exaggerated  the  vices 
of  the  Elizabethan  art,  and  lost  its  virtues.  But  this 
is  not  the  whole  account  of  the  matter.  We  must  add 
that  a  new  Prose,  of  greater  force  of  thought  and  of  a 
simpler  style  than  the  Elizabethan,  arose  in  the  writings 
of  a  theologian  like  Chillingworth  and  a  philosopher 
like  Hobbes  :  and  that  a  new  type  of  poetry,  distinct 
from  that  ^'  metaphysical  "  poetry  of  fantastic  wit  into 
which  Elizabethan  poetry  had  degenerated,  was  written 
by  some  of  the  lyrical  writers  of  the  court.  It  was 
Elizabethan  in  its  lyric  note,  but  it  was  not  obscure. 
It  had  grace,  simplicity,  and  smoothness.  In  its  greater 
art  and  clearness  it  tells  us  that  the  critical  school  is 
at  hand. 

87.  Prose  Literature. — Philosophy  passed 
from  Elizabeth  into  the  reign  of  James  I.  with  Francis 
Bacon.  The  splendour  of  the  form  and  of  the  English 
prose  of  the  Advancement  of  Learning,  two  books  of 
which  were  published  in  1605,  raises  it  into  the  realm 
of  pure  literature.  It  was  expanded  into  nine  Latin 
books  in  1623,  and  with  the  Novum  Organum,  finished 
in  1620,  and  the  Historia  N atur alls  et  Experimentalise 
1622,  formed  the  Instauratio  Magna,  The  impulse 
these  books  gave  to  research,  and  to  the  true  method 
of  research,  though  only  partly  right,  awoke  scientific 
inquiry  in  England  ;  and  before  the  Royal  Society  was 
constituted  in  the  reign  of  Charles  II.,  our  science, 
though  far  behind  that  of  the  Continent,  had  done 
some  good  work.  William  Harvey  lectured  on  the 
Circulation  of  the  Blood  in  161 5,  and  during  the  Civil 
War  and  the  Commonwealth  men  like  Robert  Boylj, 
the  chemist,  and  John  Wallis,  the  mathematician,  and 
others  met  in  William  Petty's  rooms  at  Brazenose, 
and  prepared  the  way  for  Newton. 

88.  History,  except  in  the  publication  of  the  earlier 


I  lo  ENGLISH  LITERA  TURE.  [chap. 

Chronicles  of  Archbishop  Parker,  does  not  appear  in 
the  later  part  of  EHzabeth's  reign,  but  under  James  I. 
Camden,  Spelman,  Selden,  and  Speed  continued  the 
antiquarian  researches  of  Stow  and  Grafton.  Bacon  \ 
published  a  History  of  Henry  VII.  and  Daniel  the  poet, 
in  his  History  of  England  to  the  Time  of  Edward  HI, 
1 6 13-18,  was  one  of  the  first  to  throw  history  into  such 
a  literary  form  as  to  make  it  popular.  Knolles' 
History  of  the  Turks,  1603;  and  Sir  Walter 
Raleigh's  vast  sketch  01  the  History  of  the  World 
show  how  for  the  first  time  history  spread  itself  be- 
yond English  interests.,  Raleigh's  book,  written  in 
the  peaceful  evening  of  a  stormy  life,  and  in  the 
quiet  of  his  prison,  is  not  oniy  literary  from  the 
ease  and  vigour  of  its  style,  but  from  its  still  spirit  of 
melancholy  thought. 

In  1 614,  John  Selden's  Titles  of  Ho7iour  added  to 
the  accurate  work  he  had  done  in  Latin  on  the  English 
Records,  and  his  History  of  Titles  was  written  with 
the  same  careful  regard  for  truth  in  1618.  Thomas 
May,  the  dramatist,  wrote  the  History  of  the  Parlia- 
ment of  England,  which  began  1640,  for  the  Parliament 
in  1647,  a  history  with  a  purpose;  but  the  only  book 
.of  literary  note  is  Thomas  Fuller's  Church  History  of 
Britain,  1656.  The  antiquarian  research  that  makes 
materials  for  history  was  carried  on  by  Ashmole, 
Dugdale,  and  Rush  worth. 

89.  Miscellaneous  Literature. — The  pleasure 
of  travel,  still  lingering  among  us  from  Elizabeth's 
reign,  found  a  quaint  voice  in  Thomas  Coryat's  Cru- 
dities, which,  in  16 11,  describes  his  journey  through 
France  and  Italy,  and  in  George  Sandy's  book,  161 5, 
which  tells  his  journey  in.  the  East  ;  while  Henry 
Wotton's  letters  from  Italy  are  pleasant  reading. 
The  care  with  which  Samuel  Purchas,  in  1613,  en- 
larged Hakluyt's  Voyages,  brings  us  back  to  the  time 
when  adventure  was  delight  in  England,  and  he  con- 
tinued the  same  work,  1625,  under  the  title  of  Furchas, 


v.]         ELIZABETH  TO  THE  RESTORATION.         in 

his  Pilgrhnes.  The  painting  of  short  Characters  was 
begun  by  Sir  Thomas  Overbury's  book  in  1614,  and 
carried  on  by  John  Earle  and  Joseph  Hall,  who  be- 
came bishops.  This  kind  of  literature  marks  the 
interest  in  individual  life  which  now  began  to  arise, 
and  which  soon  took  form  in  Biography,  Thomas 
Fuller's  Holy  and  Profane  State,  1642,  added  to 
sketches  of  '^  characters,^'  illustrations  of  them  in  the 
lives  of  famous  persons,  and  in  1662  his  Worthies  of 
England^  still  further  advanced  the  literature  of  bio- 
graphy. He  is  a  quaint  and  delightful  writer ;  good 
sense,  piety,  and  inventive  wit  are  woven  together  in 
his  work.  We  may  place  together  Robert  Burton's 
Anatomy  of  Melancholy^  162 1,  and  Sir  Thomas 
Browne's  Religio  Medici,  1642,  and  Fseudodoxia  as 
books  which  treat  of  miscellaneous  subjects  in  a  witty 
and  learned  f^ishion,  but  without  any  true  scholarship. 
This  kind  of  writing  was  greatly  increased  by  the 
setting  up  of  libraries,  where  men  dipped  into  every 
kind  of  literature.  It  was  in  James  I.'s  reign  that  Sir 
Thomas  Bodley  established  the  Bodleian  at  Oxford, 
and  Sir  Robert  Cotton  a  library  now  placed  in  the 
British  Museum.  A  number  of  writers  took  part  in 
the  Puritan  and  Church  controversies;  but  none  of 
them  deserve,  save  Milton,  and  Prynne,  and  James 
Qsher,  the  name  of  literary  men.  Usher's  work  was, 
as  an  Irish  Archbishop,  chiefly  taken  up  by  the  Roman 
Catholic  controversy.  William  Prynne's  fierce  in- 
vective against  the  drama  in  the  Hist?'iomas:iXy  or 
Scourge  of  Players,  earned  for  him  one  of  the  most 
cruel  sentences  of  the  Star  Chamber.  But  he  out- 
lived imprisonment  by  both  parties,  and  his  Perfect 
'Narrative  is  a  graphic  account  of  his  efforts  to  gain 
admission  to  the  House  in  Charles  II. 's  reign.  Charles 
made  him  Keeper  of  the  Records,  and  he  spent  the 
rest  of  his  varied  life  in  antiquarian  researches.  In 
pleasant  contrast  to  these  controversies  appears  the 
gentle  literature  of  Izaak  Walton's  Compleat  Angler^ 


112  ENGLISH  LITER  A  TUKE,  [chap. 

1653,  a  book  which  resembles  in  its  quaint  and  gar- 
rulous style  the  rustic  scenery  and  prattling  rivers  that 
it  celebrates,  and  marks  the  quiet  interest  in  country- 
life  which  now  began  to  grow  in  England. 

Theology. — But  there  were  others  who  rose  above 
the  war  of  party  on  both  sides  into  the  calm  air  of 
spiritual  religion.  The  English  of  Lancelot  Andre  we' s 
pious  learning  was  excelled  by  the  poetic  prose  of 
Jeremy  Taylor,  who,  at  the  close  of  Charles  I.'s 
reign,  published  his  Great  Exemplar  and  the  Holy 
Living  and  Dyings  and  shortly  afterwards  his  Sermons, 
They  had  been  preceded  in  1647  by  his  Libe?'ty  of 
Prophesying,  in  which,  agreeing  with  John  Hales 
and  William  ChiUingworth,  who  wrote  during  the 
reign  of  Charles  L,  he  pleaded  the  cause  of  religious 
liberty  and  toleration,  and  of  rightness  of  life  as 
more  important  than  a  correct  theology,  and  did 
the  same  kind  of  work  for  freedom  of  Biblical  in- 
terpretation as  Milton  strove  to  do  in  his  System 
of  Christian  Doctrine.  Taylor's  work  is  especially 
literary.  Weighty  with  argument,  his  books  are  even 
more  read  for  their  sweet  and  deep  devotion,  for 
their  rapid,  impassioned  and  convoluted  eloquence. 
On  the  other  side,  the  fine  sermons  of  Richard  Sibbes 
converted  Richard  Baxter,  whose  manifold  literary 
work  only  ended  in  the  reign  of  James  II.  One 
little  thing  of  his,  written  at  the  close  of  the  Civil 
W^ar,  became  a  household  book  in  England.  There 
used  to  be  few  cottages  which  did  not  possess  a  copy 
of  the  Saints'  Everlasting  Rest,  A  vast  number  of 
sects  arose  during  the  Commonwealth,  but  the  only 
one  which  gave  birth  to  future  literature  was  started 
by  George  Fox,  the  first  Quaker. 

The  style  of  nearly  all  these  writers  links  them  to  the 
age  of  Elizabeth.  It  did  not  follow  the  weighty  gravity 
of  Hooker,  or  the  balanced  calm  and  splendour  of 
Bacon,  but  rather  the  witty  quaintness  of  Lyly  and 
of  Sidney.      The    prose    of   men  like   Browne    and 


v.]         ELIZABETH  TO  THE  RESTORATION.         113 

Burton  and  Fuller  is  not  as  poetic  as  that  of  these 
Elizabethan  writers,  but  it  is  just  as  fanciful.  Even 
the  prose  of  Jeremy  Taylor  is  over  -  poetical,  and 
though  it  has  all  the  Elizabethan  ardour,  it  has  also 
the  Elizabethan  faults  of  excessive  wordiness  and 
fantastic  wit.  It  never  knows  where  to  stop.  Mil- 
ton's prose  works,  which  shall  be  mentioned  in  their 
place  in  his  life,  are  also  Elizabethan  in  style. 
They  have  the  fire  and  violence,  the  eloquence  and 
diffuseness,  of  the  earlier  literature,  but  in  spite  oi 
the  praise  their  style  has  received,  it  can  in  reality  be 
scarcely  called  a  style.  It  has  all  the  faults  a  prose 
style  can  have  except  obscurity  and  vulgarity.  Its 
magnificent  bursts  of  eloquence  ought  to  be  in  poetry, 
and  it  never  charms  except  when  Milton  becomes 
purposely  simple  in  personal  narrative.  There  is  no 
pure  style  in  prose  writing  till  Hobbes  began  to  write 
in  English — indeed  we  may  say  till  after  the  Restora- 
tion, unless  we  except,  on  grounds  of  weight  and 
power,  the  styles  of  Bacon  and  Hooker. 

90.  The  Decline  of  Poetry.  —  The  various 
elements  which  we  have  noticed  in  the  poetry  of 
Elizabeth's  reign,  without  the  exception  even  of  the 
slight  Catholic  element,  though  opposed  to  each 
other,  were  filled  with  one  spirit — the  love  of  England 
and  the  Queen.  Nor  were  they  ever  sharply  divided; 
they  are  found  interwoven,  and  modifying  one 
another  in  the  same  poet,  as  for  instance  Puritanism 
and  Chivalry  in  Spenser,  Catholicism  and  Love  in 
Constable ;  and  all  are  mixed  together  in  Shakspere 
and  the  dramatists.  This  unity  of  spirit  in  poetry 
became  less  and  less  after  the  queen's  death.  The 
elements  remained,  but  they  were  separated.  The 
cause  of  this  was  that  the  strife  in  politics  between 
the  Divine  Right  of  Kings  and  Liberty,  and  in  religion 
between  the  Church  and  the  Puritans,  grew  so  defined 
and  intense  that  England  ceased  to  be  at  one,  and  the 
•  poets  represented  the  parties,  not  the  whole,  of  Eng- 


1 14  ENGLISH  LITER  A  TURE.  [chap. 

land.  But  they  all  shared  in  a  certain  style  which 
induced  Johnson  to  call  them  metaphysical,  "  They 
were  those,"  Hallam  says,  ^^who  laboured  after  con- 
ceits, or  novel  turns  of  thought,  usually  false,  and 
resting  on  some  equivocation  oi  language  or  exceed- 
ingly remote  analogy."  This  style,  originating  in  the 
Euphues  and  Arcadia,  was  driven  out  by  the  passion 
which  filled  poetry  in  the  middle  period  of  Eliza- 
beth's reign,  but  was  taken  up  again  towards  its 
close,  and  grew  after  her  death  until  it  ended  by 
greatly  lessening  good  sense  and  clearness  in  Eng- 
lish poetry.  It  was  in  the  reaction  from  it,  and  in 
the  determination  to  bring  clear  thought  and  clear 
expression  of  thought  into  English  verse,  that  the 
school  of  Dryden  and  Pope — the  critical  school — - 
began.  The  poetry  from  the  later  years  of  Elizabeth 
to  Milton  illustrates  all  these  remarks. 

91.  The  Lyric  Poetry  struck  a  new  note  in  the 
songs  of  Ben  Jonson,  such  as  the  Hy)?in  to  Diana. 
They  are  less  natural,  less  able  to  be  sung  than 
Shakspere's,  more  classical,  more  artificial.  Drayton's 
Agincow  is  one  of  the  many  lyrics  still  written  on  the 
glories  of  England,  and  Wither  in  some  of  his  songs 
still  recalls  the  Elizabethan  charm.  In  Charles  I.^s  reign 
the  lyrics  of  dramatists  like  Ford,  Shirley,  Webster, 
and  others,  retain  the  same  charm.  But  none  of 
them  have  any  special  tendency.  A  new  character, 
royalist  and  of  the  court,  now  appears  in  the  lyrics  of 
Thomas  Carevv,  Edmund  Waller,  Abraham  Cow- 
ley, Sir  John  Suckling,  Colonel  Lovelace,  and 
Robert  Herrick  whose  Hesperides  was  published  in 
1648.  They  are,  for  the  most  part,  light,  pleasant, 
short  songs  and  epigrams  on  the  passing  interests  of 
the  day,  on  the  charms  of  the  court  beauties,  on  a 
lock  of  hair,  a  dress,  on  all  the  fleeting  forms  of 
fleeting  love.  Here  and  there  we  find  a  pure  or 
pathetic  song,  and  there  are  few  of  them  which  time 
has  selected  that  do  not  possess  a  gay  or  a  gentle 


v.]         ELIZABETH  TO  THE  RESTORATION,         115 

grace.  As  the  Civil  War  deepened,  the  special  court 
poetry  died,  and  the  songs  became  songs  of  battle 
and  marching,  and  devoted  and  violent  loyalty.  These 
have  been  lately  collected  under  the  title  of  Songs  of 
the  Cavaliers.  Midst  of  them  all,  like  voices  from 
another  world,  purer,  more  musical,  and  filled  with 
the  spirit  of  fine  art,  were  heard  the  lyrical  strains  of 
Milton. 

92.  Satirical  Poetry,  always  arising  when  natural 
passion  in  poetry  decays,  is  represented  in  the  later 
days  of  EHzabeth  by  Marston  the  dramatist's  coarse 
but  vigorous  satires,  and  Joseph  Hall,  afterwards 
Bishop  Hall,  whose  Virgidemiarujn,  1597,  satires  partly 
in  poetry,  make  him  the  master  satirist  of  this  time. 
John  Donne,  Dean  of  St.  Paul's,  who  also  pardy 
belongs  to  the  age  of  Elizabeth,  was,  with  John 
Cleveland  (a  furious  royalist  and  satirist  of  Charles  I.'s 
time),  the  most  obscure  and  fanciful  of  these  poets. 
Donne,  however,  rose  above  the  rest  in  the  beauty 
of  thought  and  in  the  tenderness  of  his  religious  and 
love  poems.  His  satires  are  graphic  pictures  of  the 
manners  of  the  age  of  James  I.  George  Wither  hit 
the  follies  and  vices  of  the  days  so  hard  in  his  Abuses 
Strtpt  and  W/iipt,  16 13,  that  he  was  put  into  the 
Marshalsea  prison  and  there  continued  his  satires  in 
the  Shepherd's  Hunting.  As  the  Puritan  and  the 
Royalist  became  more  opposed  to  one  anotlier, 
satirical  poetry  naturally  became  more  bitter  ;  but, 
like  the  lyrical  poetry  of  the  Civil  War,  it  look  the 
form  of  short  songs  and  pijces  which  went  about 
the  country,  as  those  of  Bishop  Corbet  did,  in  mariu- 
i^cript. 

93.  The  Rural  Poetry.  —  The  pastoral  how 
began  to  take  a  more  truly  rural  form  than  the  conven- 
tional pastorals  of  France  and  Italy,  out  of  which  it 
rose.  In  William  Browne's  Britamnas  Pastorals, 
1613  (second  part,  1616),  followed  by  the  seven 
eclogues   of   thQ   Shepherd's  Pipe,    the   element    of 


Ii6  ENGLISH  LITERATURE.  [chap. 

pleasure  in  country  life  arises,  and  from  this  time  it 
begins  to  grow  in  our  poetry.  It  appears  slightly  in 
Wither' s  Shepherd's  Hunting,  but  plainly  in  his 
Mistress  of  Fhilarete,  while  Denham's  Cooper's  Hill, 
1643,  introduces  the  poetry  which  makes  natural  land- 
scape the  ground  of  philosophic  meditation.  This 
element  of  enjoyment  of  nature,  seen  already  in 
Walton's  Compleat  Angler,  is  most  strong  in  Andrew 
Marvell,  Milton's  friend.  In  imaginative  intensity, 
in  the  fusing  together  of  personal  feeling  and  thought 
with  the  delight  received  from  nature,  his  verses  on 
the  Emigrants  in  the  Bermudas  and  the  Thou:^hts  in 
a  Garden,  and  the  little  poem,  The  Girl  Describes  her 
Fawn,  are  like  the  work  of  Wordsworth  on  one  side, 
and  like  good  Elizabethan  work  on  the  other.  They 
are,  with  Milton's  songs,  the  last  and  the  truest  echo 
of  the  lyrics  of  the  time  of  Elizabeth,  but  they  reach 
beyond  them  in  the  love  of  nature. 

94.  Spcnserians. — Among  these  broken-up  form:: 
of  poetry,  there  was  one  kind  which  was  imitative  of 
Spenser.  Phineas  Fletcher,  Giles  Fletcher, 
Henry  More  in  his  Platonical  Son^  of  the  Soul, 
1642,  and  John  Chalkhill  in  his  Thealma,  owned 
him  as  their  master.  The  Purple  Island,  1633,  of 
the  first,  an  elaborate  allegory  ot  the  body  and  mind 
of  man,  has  some  grace  and  sweetness,  and  tells  us 
that  the  scientific  element,  which,  after  the  Restoration 
took  form  in  the  setting  up  of  the  Royal  Society,  was 
so  far  spread  in  England  at  his  time  as  to  influence 
the  poets. 

95.  Religious  Poetry. — The  Temptation  and 
Victory  of  Christ,  16 10,  of  Giles  Fletcher,  is  a  deli- 
cately-wrought poem,  and  gave  hints  to  Milton  for  the 
Paradise  Regained.  It  was  a  finished  piece,  but  the 
religious  poetry  chiefly  took  form  in  collections  of  short 
poems.  Among  these  we  mention  William  Drum- 
mond's  Flowers  of  Sio7i  in  which  Platonism  lingered, 
and  Donne's  religious  poems  in  which  he  showed  his 


v.]         ELIZABETH  TO  THE  RESTORATION,         n; 

ingenuity  more  than  his  devotion.  Of  them  all,  how- 
ever, the  Temple,  1631,  of  George  Herbert,  rector 
of  Bemerton,  has  been  the  most  popular.  The  purity 
and  profound  devotion  of  its  poems  have  made  it 
dear  to  all.  Its  gentle  Church  feeling  has  pleased  all 
classes  of  Churchmen ;  its  great  quaintness,  which 
removes  it  from  true  poetry,  has  added  perhaps  to  its 
charm.  With  him  we  must  rank  Henry  Vaughan,  the 
Silurist,  whose  Sacred  Poems  (1651),  are  equally  devo- 
tional, pure,  and  quaint  \  and  Francis  Quarles,  whose 
Divine  Emblems,  1635,  is  still  read  in  the  cottages  of 
England.  On  the  Roman  Catholic  side,  William 
Habington  mingled  his  devotion  to  his  religion 
with  the  praises  of  his  wife  under  the  name  of  Castara, 
1634;  and  Richard  Crashaw,  whose  rich  inventive- 
ness was  not  made  less  rich  by  the  religious  mysticism 
which  finally  led  him  to  become  a  Roman  Catholic, 
published  his  Steps  to  the  Temple  in  1646.  On  the 
Puritan  side,  we  may  now  place  George  Wither, 
whose  Hallelujah,  1641,  a  series  of  rehgious  poems, 
was  sent  forth  just  before  the  Civil  War  began,  when 
he  left  the  king's  side  to  support  the  Parliament. 
Even  Herrick,  in  1648,  expressed  the  pious  part  of  his 
nature  in  his  Noble  Numbers,  Finally,  religious  poetry, 
after  the  return  of  Charles  II.,  passed  on  through  the 
Davideis  of  Abraham  Cowley,  and  the  Divine  Love 
of  Edmund  Waller,  to  find  its  highest  expression  in 
the  Paradise  Lost.  We  have  thus  traced  through  all 
Us  forms  the  decline  of  poetry.  From  this  decay  we 
pass  into  a  new  created  world  when  we  come  to 
speak  of  Milton.  Between  the  dying  poetry  of  the 
past  and  the  uprising  of  a  new  kind  of  poetry  in 
Dryden,  stands  alone  the  majestic  work  of  a  great 
genius  who  touches  the  FJizabethan  time  with  one 
hand  and  our  own  time  with  the  other. 

96.  John  Milton  was  the  last  of  the  Elizabethans, 
and,  except  Shakspere,  far  the  greatest  of  them  all. 
Porn  in   1608,  in  Bread-street  (close  by  the  Mermaid 


1 1 8  ENGLISH  LITER  A  TURE.  [chap. 

Tavern),  he  may  have  seen  Shakspere,  for  he  re- 
mained till  he  was  sixteen  in  London.  His  literary- 
life  may  be  said  to  begin  with  his  entrance  into  Cam- 
bridge, in  1625,  the  year  of  the  accession  of  Charles  I. 
Nicknamed  the  *'  Lady  of  Christ's"  from  his  beauty 
and  delicate  taste  and  morality,  he  soon  attained  a 
great  fame,  and  during  the  seven  years  of  his  life  at 
the  university  his  poetic  genius  opened  itself  in  the 
English  poems  of  which  I  give  the  dates.  On  the 
Death  of  a  Fair  Infant,  1626.  At  a  Vacation  Exercise, 
1628.  On  the  Morning  of  Christ's  Nativity,  1629. 
On  the  Circumcision,  On  Time,  At  a  Solemn  Mustek, 
The  Passion,  hpitaph  on  Shah  per e,  1630.  On  the 
University  Carrier,  Epitaph  on  Marchioness  of  Wor- 
cester, 1631  ;  Sonnet  i.,  O/i  Attainifig  the  Age  of  Twenty- 
th  ree  ;  Son  net  ii. ,  To  the  Nigh  tingale.  Thefirstsonnet, 
explained  by  a  letter  that  accompanied  it,  shows  that 
Milton  had  given  up  his  intention  of  becoming  a 
clergyman.  He  left  the  university  in  1632,  and  went 
to  live  at  Horton,  near  Windsor,  where  he  spent  five 
years,  steadily  reading  the  Greek  and  Latin  writers, 
and  amusing  himself  with  mathematics  and  music. 
Poetry  was  not  neglected.  The  Allegro  and  Pense- 
roso  were  written  in  1633,  and  probably  the  Arcades; 
Comus  was  acted  in  1634,  and  Lycidas  composed  in 
1637.  They  prove  that  though  Milton  was  Puritan  in 
heart  his  Puritanism  was  of  that  earlier  type  which 
neither  disdained  the  arts  nor  letters.  But  they  re- 
present a  growing  revolt  from  the  Court  and  the 
Church.  The  Penseroso  prefers  the  contemplative 
life  to  the  mirthful,  and  Co?nus,  though  a  masque, 
rose  into  a  poem  to  the  glory  of  temperance,  and 
under  its  allegory  attacked  the  Court.  Three  years 
later,  Lycidas  interrupts  its  exquisite  stream  of  poetry 
with  a  fierce  and  resolute  onset  on  the  greedy 
shepherds  of  the  Churchy  Milton  had  taken  his 
Presbyterian  bent. 

In   1638  he  went  to  Italy,  the  second  home  of  so 


v.]         ELIZABETH  TO  THE  RESTORATION,         119 

many  of  the  English  poets,  and  visited  Florence, 
where  he  saw  Galileo,  and  Rome.  At  Naples  he 
heard  the  sad  news  of  civil  war,  which  determined 
him  to  return;  *'  inasmuch  as  I  thought  it  base  to  be 
travelling  at  my  ease  for  amusement,  while  my  fellow- 
countrymen  at  home  were  fighting  for  liberty."  But 
hearing  that  the  war  had  not  yet  arisen,  he  remained 
in  Italy  till  the  end  of  1639,  and  at  the  meeting  of 
the  Long  Parliament  we  find  him  in  a  house  in 
Aldersgate,  where  he  lived  till  1645.  He  had  pro- 
jected while  abroad  a  great  epic  poem  on  the  subject 
of  Arthur  (again  the  Welsh  subject  returns),  but  in 
London  his  mind  changed,  and  among  a  number  of 
subjects,  tended  at  last  to  Paradise  Lost,  which  he 
meant  to  throw  into  the  form  of  a  Greek  Tragedy 
with  lyrics  and  choruses. 

97.  Milton's  Prose — The  Commonwealth. 
— Suddenly  his  whole  life  changed,  and  for  twenty 
years — 1 640-1 660 — he  was  carried  out  of  art  into 
politics,  out  of  poetry  into  prose.  Most  of  the  Son- 
nets^ however,  belong  to  this  time.  Stately,  rugged, 
or  graceful,  as  he  pleased  to  make  them,  some  like 
Hebrew  psalms,  others  having  the  classic  ease  of 
Horace,  some  even  tender  as  Milton  could  gravely  be, 
they  are  true,  unlike  those  of  Shakspere  and  Spenser, 
to  the  correct  form  of  this  difficult  kind  of  poetry. 
But  they  were  all  he  could  now  do  of  his  true  work. 
Before  the  Civil  War  began  in  1642,  he  had  written 
five  vigorous  pamphlets  against  Episcopacy.  Six  more 
pamphlets  appeared  in  the  next  two  years.  One  of 
these  was  the  Areopagitica  ;  or,  Speech  for  the  Liberty 
\of  Unlicensed  Printing,  1644,  a  bold  and  eloquent 
attack  on  the  censorship  of  the  press  by  the  Presby. 
terians.  Another  was  a  tract  on  Education,  The 
four  pamphlets  in  which  he  advocated  conditional 
divorce  made  him  still  more  the  horror  of  the 
Presbyterians.  In  1646  he  published  his  poems,  and 
"in  that  year  the  sonnet  On  the  Forcers  of  Conscience 

11 


I20  ENGLISH  LITERATURE,  [chap. 

shows  that  he  had  wholly  ceased  to  be  Presbyterian. 
His  political  pamphlets  begin  when  his  Tenure  of 
Kings  and  Mai^i st rates  defended  in  1649  the  execu- 
tion of  the  king.  The  Eikonodastes  answered  the 
Eikon  Basilike  (a  portraiture  of  the  sufferings  of  the 
king  by  Dr.  Gauden),  and  his  famous  Latin  Defence 
for  the  People  of  England^  165 1,  replied  to  Salmasius' 
Defence  of  Charles  Z,  and  inflicted  so  pitiless  a  lashing 
on  the  great  Leyden  scholar,  that  his  fame  went  over 
the  whole  of  Europe.  In  the  next  year  he  wholly 
lost  his  sight.  But  he  continued  his  work  (being 
Latin  secretary  since  1649)  when  Cromwell  was  made 
Protector,  and  wrote  another  Defe?ice  for  the  Eng- 
lish People,  1654,  and  a  further  Defence  of  himself 
against  scurrilous  charges.  This  closed  the  controversy 
in  1655.  In  the  last  year  of  the  Protector's  life  he 
began  the  Paradise  Lost,  but  the  death  of  Cromwell 
threw  him  back  into  poHtics,  and  three  more  pamphlets 
on  the  questions  of  a  Free  Church  and  a  Free  Com- 
monwealth were  useless  to  prevent  the  Restoration. 
It  was  a  wonder  he  was  not  put  to  death  in  1660,  and 
he  was  in  hiding  and  in  custody  for  a  time.  At  last 
he  settled  in  a  house  near  Bunhill  Fields.  It  was 
here  that  Paradise  Lost  was  finished,  before  the  end 
of  1665,  and  then  published  in  1667. 

98.  Paradise  Lost. — We  may  regret  that  Milton 
was  shut  away  from  his  art  during  twenty  years  of  con- 
troversy. But  it  may  be  that  the  poems  he  wrote, 
when  the  great  cause  he  fought  for  had  closed  in 
seeming  defeat  but  real  victory,  gained  from  its  solemn 
issues  and  from  the  moral  grandeur  with  which  he 
wrought  for  its  ends  their  majestic  movement,  their 
grand  style,  and  their  grave  beauty.  During  the  struggle 
he  had  never  forgotten  his  art.  "  I  may  one  day  hope/' 
he  said,  speaking  of  his  youthful  studies,  "  to  have  ye 
again,  in  a  still  time,  when  there  shall  be  no  chiding. 
Not  in  these  Noises,"  and  the  saying  strikes  the  note 
of  calm  sublimity  which  is  kept  in  Paradise  Lost,     It 


v.]  ELIZABETH  TO  THE  RESTORATION,         121 

opens  with  the  awaking  of  the  rebel  angels  in  Hell 
after  their  fall  from  Heaven,  the  consultation  of  their 
chiefs  how  best  to  carry  on  the  war  with  God,  and  the 
resolve  of  Satan  to  go  forth  and  tempt  newly  created 
man  to  fall.  He  takes  his  flight  to  the  earth  and  finds 
Eden.  Eden  is  then  described,  and  Adam  and  Eve 
in  their  innocence.  The  next  four  books,  from  the 
fifth  to  the  eighth,  contain  the  Archangel  Raphael's 
story  of  the  war  in  Heaven,  the  fall  of  Satan,  and 
the  creation  of  the  world.  The  last  four  books  de- 
scribe the  temptation  and  the  fall  of  Man,  the  vision 
shown  by  Michael  to  Adam  of  the  future  world,  and 
of  the  redemption  of  Man  by  Christ,  and  finally 
the  expulsion  from  Paradise. 

As  we  read  the  great  epic,  we  feel  that  the  light- 
ness of  heart  of  the  Allegro^  that  even  the  classic  philo- 
sophy of  the  Co7?ius,  are  gonco  The  beauty  of  the 
poem  is  like  that  of  a  stately  temple,  which,  vast  in  con- 
ception, is  involved  in  detail.  The  style  is  the  greatest 
iu  the  whole  range  of  English  poetry.  Milton's  intel- 
lectual force  supports  and  condenses  his  imaginative 
force,  and  his  art  is  almost  too  conscious  of  itself. 
Sublimity  is  its  essential  difference.  The  interest  of 
the  story  collects  at  first  round  the  character  of  Satan, 
but  he  grows  meaner  as  the  poem  goes  on,  and  his 
second  degradation  after  he  has  destroyed  innocence 
is  one  of  the  finest  and  most  consistent  motives  in 
the  poem.  The  tenderness  of  Milton,  his  love  of 
beauty,  the  passionate  fitness  of  his  words  to  his 
work,  his  religious  depth,  fill  the  scenes  in  which 
he  paints  Paradise,  our  parents  and  their  fall,  and  at 
last  all  thought  and  emotion  centre  round  Adam  and 
Eve,  until  the  closing  lines  leave  us  with  their  lonely 
image  on  our  minds.  In  every  part  of  the  poem,  in 
every  character  in  it,  as  indeed  in  all  his  poems, 
Milton's  intense  individuality  appears.  It  is  a  plea- 
sure to  find  it.  The  egotism  of  such  a  man,  said 
Coleridge;  is  a  revelation  of  spirit. 


122  ENGLISH  LITER  A  TURK.  [chap. 

99.  Milton's  Later  Pcems. — Paj-adise  Lost  was 
followed  by  Paradise  Regained  and  Samson  Agonistes, 
published  togedier  in  167 1.  Pa?'adise  Regained  O'pQiis 
with  the  journey  of  Christ  into  the  wilderness  after  His 
baptism,  and  its  four  books  describe  the  temptation  of 
Christ  by  Satan,  and  the  answers  and  victory  of  the 
Redeemer.  The  speeches  in  it  drown  the  action,  and 
their  learned  argument  is  only  relieved  by  a  few  de- 
scriptions ;  but  these,  as  in  that  of  Athens,  are  done 
with  Milton's  highest  power.  The  same  solemn  beauty 
of  a  quiet  mind  and  a  more  severe  style  than  that  of 
Paradise  Lost  make  us  feel  in  it  that  Alilton  has  grown 
older. 

In  Samson  Agonistes  the  style  is  still  severer,  even 
to  the  verge  of  a  harshness  which  the  sublimity  alone 
tends  to  modify.  It  is  a  choral  drama,  after  the 
Greek  model.  Samson  in  his  blindness  is  described, 
is  called  on  to  make  sport  for  the  Philistines,  and 
overthrows  them  in  the  end.  Samson  represents  the 
fallen  Puritan  cause,  and  Samson's  victorious  death 
Milton's  hopes  for  the  final  triumph  of  that  cause. 
The  poem  has  all  the  grandeur  of  the  last  words 
of  a  great  man  in  whom  there  was  now  ^^cahn  of 
mind,  all  passion  spent."  It  is  also  the  last  word  of 
the  music  of  the  Elizabethan  drama  long  after  its 
notes  seemed  hushed,  and  the  sound  is  strange  in 
the  midst  of  the  new  world  of  the  Restoration.  Soon 
afterwards,  November,  1674,  blind  and  old  and  fallen 
on  evil  days,  Milton  died ;  but  neither  bUndness,  old 
age,  nor  e/il  days  could  lessen  the  inward  light,  nor 
impair  the  imaginative  power  with  which  he  sang,  it 
seemed  with  the  angels,  the  "undisturbed  song  of  pure 
concent/'  until  he  joined  himself,  at  last,  with  those 
"just  spirits  who  wear  victorious  palms." 

100.  His  Work. — To  tlie  greatness  of  the  artist 
Milton  joined  the  majesty  of  a  pure  and  lofty  cha- 
racter. His  poetic  style  was  as  stately  as  his  character, 
and  proceeded  from  it.     Living  at  a  time  when  criti- 


v.]  ELIZABETH  TO  THE  RESTORATION.         123 

cism  began  to  purify  the  verse  of  England,  and  being 
himself  well  acquainted  with  the  great  classical  models, 
his  work  is  seldom  weakened  by  the  false  conceits  and 
the  intemperance  of  the  Elizabethan  writers,  and  yet 
is  as  imaginative  as  theirs,  and  as  various.  He  has 
not  their  naturalness,  nor  all  their  intensity,  but  he 
has  a  larger  grace,  a  more  finished  art,  and  a  sublime 
dignity  they  did  not  possess.  All  the  kinds  of  poetry 
which  he  touched  he  touched  with  the  ease  of  great 
strength,  and  with  so  much  weight,  that  they  became 
new  in  his  hands.  He  put  a  new  life  into  the  masque, 
the  sonnet,  the  elegy,  the  descriptive  lyric,  the  song, 
the  choral  drama ;  and  he  created  the  epic  in  England. 
The  lighter  love  poem  he  never  wrote,  and  we  are 
grateful  that  he  kept  his  coarse  satirical  power  apart  from 
his  poetry.  In  some  points  he  was  untrue  to  his  descent 
from  the  Elizabethans,  for  he  had  no  dramatic  faculty, 
and  he  had  no  humour.  He  summed  up  in  himself 
the  learned  influences  of  the  Enghsh  Renaissance,  and 
handed  them  on  tons.  His  taste  was  as  severe,  his  verse 
as  polished,  his  method  and  language  as  strict  as  those 
of  the  school  of  Dryden  and  Pope  that  grew  up  when 
he  was  old.  A  literary  past  and  present  thus  met  in 
him,  nor  did  he  fail,  like  all  the  greatest  men,  to  make 
a  cast  into  the  future.  He  began  the  poetry  of  pure 
natural  description.  Lastly,  he  did  not  represent  in 
any  way  the  England  that  followed  the  tyranny,  the 
coarseness,  the  sensuality,  the  falseness,  or  the  ir- 
religion  of  the  Stuarts,  but  he  did  represent  Puritan 
England,  and  the  whole  career  of  Puritanism  from 
its  cradle  to  its  grave. 

101.  The  Pilgrim's  Progress. — We  might  say 
that  Puritanism  said  its  last  great  words  with  Milton, 
were  it  not  that  its  spirit  continued  in  English  life, 
were  it  not  also  that  four  years  afier  his  death,  in 
1678,  JoHV  Bun  VAN,  who  had  previously  written 
religious  poems,  and  in  1665  the  Holy  City,  published 
the  Pilgrim's  Frogress.    It  is  the  journey  of  Christian 


124  ENGLISH  LITERATURE,  [chap. 

the  Pilgrim,  from  the  City  of  Destruction  to  the 
Celestial  City.  The  seco7id part  was  published  in  1684, 
and  in  1682  the  allegory  of  the  Holy  War.  I  class  the 
PilgrM s  Progress  here,  because  in  its  imaginative 
fervour  and  poetry,  and  in  its  quality  of  naturalness, 
it  belongs  to  the  spirit  of  the  Elizabethan  times. 
Written  by  a  man  of  the  people,  it  is  a  people's  book ; 
and  its  simple  form  grew  out  of  passionate  feeling,  and 
not  out  of  self-conscious  art.  The  passionate  feeling 
was  religious,  and  in  painting  the  pilgrim's  progress 
towards  Heaven,  and  his  battle  with  the  world  and 
temptation,  and  sorrow,  the  book  touched  those  deep 
and  poetical  interests  which  belong  to  poor  and 
rich.  Its  language,  the  language  of  the  Bible,  and  its 
allegorical  form,  set  on  foot  a  plentiful  literature  of 
the  same  kind.  But  none  have  equalled  it.  Its  form 
is  almost  epic  :  its  dramatic  dialogue,  its  clear  types 
of  character,  its  vivid  descriptions,  as  of  Vanity  Fair, 
and  of  places  such  as  the  Dark  Valley  and  the  Delect- 
able Mountains  which  represent  states  of  the  human 
soul,  have  given  an  equal  but  a  different  pleasure  to 
children  and  men,  to  the  ignorant  villager  and  to 
Lord  Macaulay. 


REST0RA7I0N  TO  DEATH  OF  POPE,         125 


CHAPTER  VI. 

FROM    THE    RESTORATION    TO   THE    DEATH    OF   POPE 
AND    SWIFT. 

1660—1745. 

Butler's  Hudibras^  1663- — J-  Dryden,  born  1631 ;  his  Dramas 
begin  1663  ;  Absalom  and  Ahitophrl,  1681  ;  Hind  and 
Panther,  1687  ;  Fables  and  death,  1700-— Wycherley, 
Congreve,  Farquhar,  and  Vanbrugh,  Dramas,  from  1672- 
1726. — Newton's  Principia,  1687. — Locke's  Essay  on  the 
Human  Understanding,  1690- — Alexander  Pope,  born 
1688;  Pastorals,  1709;  Rape  of  the  Lock,  1712;  Homer 
finished,  1725 :  Essay  on  Man,  1732-1734  ;  Dunciad 
finished,  1741 ;  dies,  1744.— Swift's  Tale  of  a  Tub,  1704 ; 
Gulliver  s  Travels,  3726. — Defoe's  Robinson  Crusoe,  1719* 
Steele  and  Addison,  Spectator,  1711. — Addison's  Cato, 
1713  ;  BuUer's  Analogy,  1736- 

102.  Poetry.  Change  of  Style. — We  have  seen 
the  natural  style  as  distinguished  from  the  artificial  in 
the  Elizabethan  poets.  Style  became  not  only  natural 
but  artistic  when  it  was  used  by  a  great  genius  like 
Shakspere  or  Spenser,  for  a  first-rate  poet  creates 
rules  of  art ;  his  work  itself  is  often  art.  But  when 
the  art  of  poetry  is  making,  its  rules  are  not  laid  down, 
and  the  second-rate  poets,  inspired  only  by  their  feel- 
ings, will  write  in  a  natural  style  unrestrained  by  rules, 
that  is,  they  will  put  their  feelings  into  verse  without 
caring  much  for  the  form  in  which  they  do  it.  As 
long  as  they  live  in  the  midst  of  a  youthful  national 
life,  and  feel  an  ardent  sympathy  with  it,  their  style 
will  be  fresh  and  impassioned,  and  give  pleasure  be- 
cause of  the  strong  feeling  that  inspires  it.  But  it 
will  also  be  extravagant  and  unrestrained  in  its  use  of 


126  ENGLISH  LITERATURE.  [chap. 

images  and  words  because  of  its  want  of  art.  This  is 
the  history  of  the  style  of  the  poets  of  the  middle 
period  of  Ehzabeth's  reign.  (2)  Afterwards  the  na- 
tional life  grew  chill,  and  the  feelings  of  the  poets 
also  chill.  Then  the  want  of  art  in  the  style  made 
itself  felt.  The  far-fetched  images,  the  hazarded 
meanings,  the  over-fanciful  way  of  putting  thoughts, 
the  sensational  expression  of  feeling,  in  which  the 
Elizabethan  poets  indulged,  not  only  appeared  in 
all  their  ugliness  when  they  were  inspired  by  no 
warm  feeling,  but  were  indulged  in  far  more  than 
before.  Men  tried  to  produce  by  extravagant  use 
of  words  the  same  results  that  ardent  feeling  had 
produced,  and  the  more  they  failed  the  more  ex- 
travagant and  fantastic  they  became,  till  at  last 
their  poetry  ceased  to  have  clear  meaning.  This  is 
the  history  of  the  style  of  the  poets  from  the  later 
days  of  Elizabeth  till  the  Civil  War.  (3)  The  natural 
style,  unregulated  by  art,  had  thus  become  unnatural. 
When  it  had  reached  that  point,  men  began  to  feel 
how  necessary  it  was  that  the  style  of  poetry  should 
be  subjected  to  the  rules  of  art,  and  two  influences 
partly  caused  and  partly  supported  this  desire.  One 
w^as  the  influence  of  Milton.  Milton,  first  by  his  superb 
genius,  which  as  I  said  creates  of  itself  an  artistic 
style,  and  secondly  by  his  knowledge  and  imitation 
of  the  great  classical  models,  was  able  to  give  the 
first  example  in  England  of  a  pure,  grand,  and 
finished  style,  and  in  blank  verse  and  the  sonnet, 
wrote  for  the  first  time  with  absolute  correctness. 
Another  influence  was  that  of  the  movement  all  over 
Europe  towards  inquiry  into  the  right  way  of  doing 
things,  and  into  the  truth  of  things,  a  movement  we 
shall  soon  see  at  work  in  science,  politics,  and  religion. 
In  poetry  it  produced  a  school  of  criticism  which 
first  took  form  in  France,  and  the  influence  of  Boileau, 
La  Fontaine,  and  others  who  were  striving  after 
greater  finish  and  neatness  of  expression,  told  on  Eng- 


VI.]      kESTOkA  TION  TO  DEA  TH  OP  POPE,       \  1"? 

land  now.  It  is  an  influence  which  has  been  ex- 
aggerated. It  is  absurd  to  place  the  "creaking 
lyre"  of  Boileau  side  by  side  with  Dryden's  "long 
majestic  march  and  energy  divine  "  of  verse.  Our 
critical  school  of  poets  have  no  French  qualities  in 
them  even  when  they  imitate  the  French.  (4)  Further, 
our  own  poets  had  already,  before  the  Restoration, 
begun  the  critical  work,  and  the  French  influence 
served  only  to  give  it  a  greater  impulse.  We  shall 
see  the  growth  of  a  colder  and  more  correct  spirit  of 
art  in  Cowley,  Denham,  and  Waller.  Vigorous  form 
was  given  to  that  spirit  by  Dryden,  and  perfection 
of  artifice  added  to  it  by  Pope.  The  artificial  style 
succeeded  to  and  extinguished  the  natural. 

103.  Change  of  Poetic  Subject. — The  subject 
of  the  Elizabethan  poets  was  Man  as  influenced  by  the 
Passions,  and  it  was  treated  from  the  side  of  natural 
feehng.  This  was  fully  and  splendidly  done  by  Shak- 
spere.  But  after  a  time  this  subject  followed,  as  we 
have  seen  in  speaking  of  the  drama,  the  same  career 
as  the  style.  It  was  treated  in  an  extravagant  and 
sensational  manner,  and  the  representation  of  the  pas- 
sions tended  to  become,  and  did  become  unnatural  or 
fantastic.  Milton  alone  redeemed  the  subject  from 
this  vicious  excess.  He  wrote  in  a  grave  and  natural 
manner  of  the  passions  of  the  human  heart,  and  he 
made  strong  the  religious  passions  of  love  of  God, 
sorrow  for  sin,  and  others,  in  English  poetry.  But  with 
him  the  subject  of  man  as  influenced  by  the  passions 
died  for  a  time.  Dryden,  Pope,  and  their  followers, 
turned  to  another.  They  left  the  passions  aside,  and 
wrote  of  the  things  in  which  the  intellect  and  the  con- 
science, the  social  and  political  instincts  in  man 
were  interested.  In  this  way  the  satiric,  didactic, 
philosophical,  and  party  poetry  of  a  new  school  arose. 

104.  Transition  Poets.  —  There  were  a  few 
poets,  writing  partly  before  and  partly  after  the  Re- 
storation^ who  represent  the  passage  from  the  fantastic 


128  ENGLISH  LITERATURE.  [chap. 

to  the  more  correct  style.  Abraham  Cowley  was  one 
of  these.  His  love  poems,  The  Mistress^  1647,  are 
courtly,  witty,  and  have  some  of  the  Elizabethan 
imagination.  His  later  poems,  owing  probably  to 
his  life  in  France,  were  more  exact  in  verse,  and 
more  cold  in  form.  The  same  may  be  said  of  Edmund 
Waller,  who  "  first  made  writing  in  rhyme  easily 
an  art."  He  also  lived  a  long  time  in  France,  and 
died  in  1687.  Sir  John  Denham's  Cooper's  Hill,  1643, 
was  a  favourite  with  Dryden  for  the  **  majesty  of 
its  style,"  and  its  didactic  reflectiveness,  and  the  chill 
stream  of  its  verse  and  thought  link  him  closely  to 
Pope.  Nor  ought  I  to  omit,  as  an  example  of  the 
heroic  poem,  William  Chamberlayne's  Pharonnida^ 
1659.  Sir  W.  Davenant's  Gondibert,  1651,  also  an 
heroic  poem,  is  perhaps  the  most  striking  example  of 
this  transition.  Worthless  as  poetry,  it  represents  the 
new  interest  in  political  philosophy  and  in  science  that 
was  arising,  and  preludes  the  intellectual  poetry.  Its 
preface  discourses  of  rime  and  the  rules  of  art,  and 
represents  the  new  critical  influence  which  came 
over  with  the  exiled  court  from  France.  The  critical 
school  had  therefore  begun  even  before  Dryden's 
poems  were  written.  The  change  was  less  sudden 
than  it  seemed. 

Satiric  poetry,  soon  to  become  a  greater  thing,  was 
made  during  this  transition  time  into  a  powerful  weapon 
by  two  men.  each  on  a  different  side.  Andrew  Marvell's 
Satires^  after  the  Restoration,  embody  the  Puritan's 
wrath  with  the  vices  of  the  court  and  king,  and  his 
shame  for  the  disgrace  of  England  among  the  nations 
The  Hudibras  of  Samuel  Butler,  in  1663,  represents 
the  fierce  reaction  which  had  set  in  against  Puritanism. 
It  is  justly  famed  for  wit,  learning,  good  sense,  and 
ingenious  drollery,  and,  in  accordance  with  the  new 
criticism,  it  is  absolutely  v/ithout  obscurity.  It  is 
often  as  terse  as  Pope's  best  work.  But  it  is  too 
long,  its  wit  wearies  us  at  last,  and  it  undoes  the  force 


VI.]        RESTORATION  TO  DEATH  OF  POPE,         129 

of  its  attack  on    the    Puritans    by  its  exaggeration. 

'  Satire  should  have  at  least  the  semblance  of  truth  : 
yet  Butler  calls  the  Puritans  cowards.  We  turn  now 
to  the  first  of  these  poets  in  whom  poetry  is  founded 
on  intellect  rather  than  on  feeling,  and  whose  best 
verse  is  devoted  to  argument  and  satire. 

105.  John  Dryden  was  the  first  of  the  new,  as 
Milton  was  the  last  of  the  elder,  school  of  poetry. 
It  was  late  in  life  that  he  gained  fame.  Born  in 
163 1,  he  was  a  Cromwellite  till  the  Restoration, 
when  he  began  the  changes  which  mark  his  life. 
His  poem  on  the  Death  of  the  Protector  was  soon 
followed  by  the  Astrcea  Redux,  which  celebrated 
the  return  of  Justice  to  the  realm  in  the  person  of 
Charles  II.  The  Annus  Mirabilis  appeared  in  1667, 
and  in  this  his  great  power  w^as  first  clearly  shown. 
It  is  the  power  of  clear  reasoning  expressing  itself 
with  powerful  and  ardent  ease  in  a  rapid  succession 
of  condensed  thoughts  in  verse.  Such  a  power  fitted 
Dryden  for  satire,  and  his  Absalom  and  Ahitophel,  the 
second  part  of  which  was  mostly  written  by  Nahum 
Tate,  is  the  foremost  of  EngHsh  satires.  He  had 
been  a  play  writer  till  its  appearance  in  1681,  and  the 
rimed  plays  which  he  had  written  enabled  him  to  per- 
fect the  versification  which  is  so  remarkable  in  it  and 
the  poems  that  followed.  The  satire  itself,  written  in 
mockery  of  the  Popish  Plot  and  the  Exclusion  Bill, 
attacked  Shaftesbury  as  Ahitophel,  was  kind  to  Mon- 
mouth as  Absalorh,  and  in  its  sketch  of  Buckingham 
as  Zimri  the  poet  avenged  himself  for  the  Rehearsal. 
It  was  the  first  fine  example  of  that  party  poetry  which 
became  still  more  bitter  and  personal  in  the  hands  of 
Pope.  It  was  followed  by  the  Medal,  a  new  attack  on 
Shaftesbury,  and  the  Mac  Flecknoe,  in  which  Shadwell, 
a  rival  poet,  who  had  supported  Shaftesbury's  party, 
was  made  the  witless  successor  of  Richard  Flecknoe,  a 
poet  of  all  kinds  of  poetry,  and  master  of  none.    After 

•  these,  Dryden  embodied  his  theology  in  verse,  and  the 


I30  ENGLISH  LITERATURE,  [chap. 

Feliglo  Laia\  1682,  defends,  and  states  the  argument 
for,  the  Church  of  England.  It  was  perhaps  poverty 
that  drove  him  on  the  accession  of  James  II.  to 
change  his  reHgion,  and  the  Hijid  ajid  Panther,  1687, 
is  as  fine  a  model  of  clear  reasoning  in  behalf  of 
the  milk-white  hind  of  the  Church  of  Rome  as  the 
Religio  Laid  was  in  behalf  of  the  Church  of  England, 
which  now  becomes  the  spotted  panther.  It  produced 
in  reply  one  of  the  happiest  burlesques  in  English 
poetry,  The  Country  Mouse  and  the  City  Mouse,  the 
work  of  Charles  Montague  (Lord  Halifax),  and 
Mat  Prior.  Deprived  of  his  offices  at  the  Revo- 
lution, Dryden  turned  again  to  the  drama,  but  the 
failure  of  the  last  of  his  good  plays  in  1694,  drove 
him  again  from  the  stage,  and  he  gave  himself  up 
to  his  Tra7islation  of  Vergil  ^\\\c\\  he  finished  in  1696. 
As  a  narrative  poet  his  Fables  and  Translations,  pro- 
duced late  in  life,  in  1699,  give  him  a  high  rank, 
though  the  fine  harmony  of  their  verse  does  not  win 
us  to  forget  their  coarseness,  nor  their  lack  of  that 
skill  in  arranging  a  story  which  comes  from  imagina- 
tive feeling.  As  a  lyric  poet  his  fame  rests  on  the 
animated  Ode  for  St.  Cecilia's  Day.  His  translation 
of  Vergil  has  fire,  but  wants  the  dignity  and  tender- 
ness of  the  original.  From  Milton's  death,  1674,  till 
his  own  in  1700,  Dryden  reigned  undisputed,  and 
round  his  throne  in  Will's  Coffeehouse,  where  he  sat 
as  ^'Glorious  John,'^  we  may  place  the  names  of  the 
lesser  poets,  the  Earls  of  Dorset,  'Roscommon,  and 
Mulgrave,  Sir  Charles  Sedley,  and  the  Earl  of  Roches- 
ter. The  lighter  poetry  of  the  court  lived  on  in  the 
two  last.  John  Oldham  won  a  short  fame  by  his 
Safwes  on  the  Jesuits,  1679  ;  and  Bishop  Ken,  1668,  set 
on  foot,  in  his  Morning  and  EventJig  Hymns,  a  new 
type  of  religious  poetry. 

106.  Prose  Literature  of  the  Restoration 
and  Revolution.  Science. — During  the  Civil  War 
the    religious   and    political    struggle    absorbed    the 


VI.]         RESTORATION  TO  DEATH  OF  FOPE,         131 

country,  but  yet,  apart  from  the  strife,  a  few  men  who 
cared  for  scientific  matters  met  at  one  another's  houses. 
Out  of  this  little  knot,  after  the  Restoration,  arose  the 
Royal  Society,  embodied  in  1662.  Astronomy,  ex- 
perimental chemistry,  medicine,  mineralogy,  zoology, 
botany,  vegetable  physiology  were  all  founded  as 
studies,  and  their  literature  begun  in  the  age  of  the 
Restoration.  One  man's  work  was  so  great  in  science 
as  to  merit  his  name  being  mentioned  among  the 
literary  men  of  England.  In  167 1  Isaac  Newton 
laid  his  Theory  of  Light  before  the  Royal  Society  ; 
in  the  year  before  the  Revolution  his  Principia  estab- 
lished with  its  proof  of  the  theory  of  gravitation  the 
true  system  of  the  universe. 

It  was  in  political  and  religious  knowledge,  however, 
that  the  intellectual  inquiry  of  the  nation  was  most 
shown.  When  the  thinking  spirit  succeeds  the  active 
and  adventurous  in  a  people,  one  of  the  first  things 
they  will  think  upon  is  the  true  method  and  grounds 
of  government,  both  divine  and  human.  Two  sides 
will  be  taken :  the  side  of  authority  and  the  side  of 
reason  in  Religion  ;  the  side  of  authority  and  the 
side  of  individual  liberty  in  Politics, 

107.  The  Theological  Literature  of  those  who 
declared  that  reason  was  supreme  as  a  test  of  truth, 
arose  with  some  men  who  met  at  Lord  Falkland's 
just  before  the  Civil  War,  and  especially  with  John 
Hales  and  William  Chillingworth.  The  spirit  which 
animated  these  men  filled  also  Jeremy  Taylor,  and 
Milton  continued  their  liberal  movement  beyond  the 
Restoration.  The  same  kind  of  work,  though  modified 
towards  moresedatenessof  expression,  and  less  rational- 
istic, was  now  donebyArchbishopTillotson,  and  Bishop 
Burnet.  In  1678,  Cudworth's  Ifitellectual  System  of  the 
Universe  is  perhaps  the  best  book  on  the  controversy 
which  then  took  form  against  those  who  were  called 
Atheists.  A  number  of  divines  in  the  English  Church 
took  sides  for  Authority  or  Reason,  or  opposed  the 
12 


132  ENGLISH  LITERATURE.  [chap. 

growing  Deism  during  the  latter  half  of  the  seventeenth 
century.  It  was  an  age  of  preachers,  and  Isaac  Barrow, 
Newton's  predecessor  in  the  chair  of  mathematics  at 
Cambridge,  could  preach,  with  grave  and  copious 
eloquence,  for  three  hours  at  a  time.  Theological 
prose  was  strengthened  by  the  publication  of  the 
sermons  of  Edward  Stillingfleet  and  William  Sherlock, 
and  Sherlock's  adversary,  Robert  South,  was  as  witty 
in  rhetoric  as  he  was  fierce  in  controversy. 

io8.  Political  Literature. — The  resistance  to 
authority  in  the  opposition  to  the  theory  of  the  Divine 
Right  of  Kings  did  not  enter  into  literature  till  after 
it  had  been  worked  out  practically  in  the  Civil  War. 
During  the  Commonwealth  and  after  the  Restoration  it 
took  the  form  of  a  discussion  on  the  abstract  question 
of  the  Science  of  Government,  and  was  mingled  with 
an  inquiry  into  the  origin  of  society  and  the  ground  of 
social  life.  Milton's  papers  on  the  Divorce  Question 
and  his  litde  tractate  on  Education  were  bold  attempts 
to  solve  social  questions,  and  his  political  tracts  after 
the  death  of  Cromwell,  though  directed  to  the  ques- 
tions of  Church  and  State  which  were  burning  then, 
have  a  bearing  beyond  their  time.  But  Thomas 
HoBBES,  during  the  Commonwealth,  was  the  first 
who  dealt  with  the  question  from  the  side  of  abstract 
reason,  and  he  is  also  the  first  of  all  our  prose  writers 
whose  style  may  be  said  to  be  uniform  and  correct, 
and  adapted  carefully  to  the  subjects  on  which  he 
wrote.  His  treatise,  the  Lanathan^  1651,  declared 
(i)  that  the  origin  of  all  power  was  in  the  people,  and 
(2)  the  end  of  all  power  was  for  the  common  weal.  It 
destroyed  the  theory  of  a  Divine  Right  of  Kings  and 
Priests,  but  it  created  another  kind  of  Divine  Right 
when  it  said  that  the  power  lodged  in  rulers  by  the 
people  could  not  be  taken  away  by  the  people.  Sir 
R.  Filmer  supported  the  side  of  Divine  Right  in  his 
Patriarcha,  pubHshed  1680.  Henry  Nevile,  in  his 
Dialogue    concerning    Government,   and  James   Har- 


VI.]        RESTORATION  TO  DEATH  OF  POPE,         133 

rington  in  his  romance,  The  Commonwealth  of  Oceana^ 
published  at  the  beginning  of  the  Commonwealth, 
contended  that  all  secure  government  was  to  be  based 
on  property,  but  Nevile  supported  a  monarchy,  and 
Harrington — with  whom  I  may  class  Algernon  Sidney, 
whose  political  treatise  on  government  is  as  states- 
manlike as  it  is  finely  written — a  democracy,  on  this 
basis.  I  may  here  mention  that  it  was  during  this 
period,  in  1667,  that  the  first  effort  was  made  after  a 
Science  of  Political  Economy  by  Sir  William  Petty  in 
his  Treatise  on  Taxes. 

109.  John  Locke,  after  the  Revolution,  in  1689- 
1690,  followed  the  two  doctrines  of  Hobbes  in  his 
treatise  on  Civil  Government,  but  with  these  important 
additions— (i)  that  the  people  have  a  right  to  take 
away  the  power  given  by  them  to  the  ruler,  (2)  that 
the  ruler  is  responsible  to  the  people  for  the  trust 
reposed  in  him,  and  (3)  that  legislative  assemblies 
are  Supreme  as  the  voice  of  the  people.  This  was 
the  political  philosophy  of  the  Revolution.  Locke 
carried  the  same  spirit  of  free  inquiry  into  the  realm 
of  religion,  and  in  his  three  Letters  on  Toleration^ 
1689-90-92,  laid  down  the  philosophical  grounds  foi 
liberty  of  religious  thought.  He  finished  by  entering 
the  realm  of  metaphysical  inquiry.  In  1690  appeared 
his  Essay  concerning  the  Hicman  Understandings  in 
which  he  investigated  its  limits,  and  traced  all  ideas, 
and  therefore  all  knowledge,  to  experience.  In  his 
clear  statement  of  the  way  in  which  the  Under- 
standing w^orks,  in  the  way  in  which  he  guarded  it 
and  Language  against  their  errors  in  the  inquiry  after 
truth,  he  did  as  much  for  the  true  method  of  thinking 
as  Bacon  had  done  for  the  Science  of  nature. 

no.    The  intellectual   stir  of  the   time  produced, 

apart  from  the  great  movement  of  thought,  a  good 

deal  ol  Miscellaneous  Literature.    The  painting 

ot  short  ''''characters'^  was  carried  on  after  the  Resto- 

.  ration  by  Samuel  Butler  and  W.  Charleton.     These 


134  ENGLISH  LITERATURE.  [chap. 

"characters  "  had  no  personality,  but  as  party  spirit 
deepened,  names  thinly  disguised  were  given  to 
characters  drawn  of  Uving  men,  and  Dry  den  and  Pope 
in  poetry  and  all  the  prose  wits  of  the  time  of  Queen 
Anne  and  George  I.  made  personal  and  often  violent 
sketches  of  their  opponents  a  special  element  in  litera- 
ture. On  the  other  hand,  Izaak  Walton's  Lives,  in  1670, 
are  examples  of  kindly,  pleasant,  and  C2ixd\x\  Biography, 
Cowley's  small  volume,  written  shortly  before  his  death 
in  1667,  and  Dryden,in  the  masterly  criticisms  on  his  art 
which  he  prefixed  to  some  of  his  dramas,  gave  richness 
to  the  Essay,  These  two  writers  began — with  Hobbes 
— the  second  period  of  English  prose,  in  which  the 
style  is  easy,  unaffected,  moulded  to  the  subject,  and 
the  proper  words  are  put  in  their  proper  places.  It  is 
as  different  from  the  style  that  came  before  it  as  the 
easy  manners  of  a  gentleman  are  from  those  of  a 
learned  man  unaccustomed  to  society.  In  William  III. 's 
time  Sir  W.  Temple's  pleasant  Essays  bring  us  in  style 
and  tone  nearer  to  the  great  class  of  essayists  of  whom 
Addison  was  chief.  Lady  Rachel  Russell's  Letters 
begin  th  j  Letter-ivritrng  Literature  of  England.  Pepys 
(1660-69)  and  Evelyn,  whose  Diary  grows  full  after 
1640,  begin  that  class  of  gossiping  Memoirs  which  have 
been  of  so  much  use  in  giving  colour  to  history.  History 
itself  at  this  time  is  little  better  than  memoirs,  and 
such  a  name  may  be  fairly  given  to  Clarendon's  History 
of  the  Civil  Ways  (begun  in  1641)  and  to  Bishop 
Burnet's  History  of  his  Own  Time,  and  to  his  History 
of  the  J^eformation  (begun  in  1679,  completed  in  1715). 
Finally  Classical  Criticisfn,  in  the  discussion  on  the 
genuineness  of  the  Letters  of  Phalaris,  was  created 
by  Richard  Bentley  in  1697-99.  Literature  was 
therefore  plentiful.  It  was  also  correct,  but  it  was  not 
inventive. 

III.  The  Literature  of  Queen  Anne  and 
the  first  Georges. — With  the  closing  years  of 
William  III.  and  the  accession  of  Queen  Anne  (1702) 


VI.]        RESTORA  TION  TO  DEA  TH  OF  POPE,         135 

a  literature  arose  which  was  partly  new  and  partly  a 
continuance  of  that  of  the  Restoration.  The  conflict 
between  those  who  took  the  oath  to  the  new  dynasty 
and  the  Nonjurors  who  refused,  the  hot  blood  that  it 
produced,  the  war  between  Dissent  and  Church,  and 
between  the  two  parties  which  now  took  the  names  of 
Whig  and  Tory,  produced  a  mass  of  political  pamph- 
lets, of  which  Daniel  Defoe's  and  Swift's  were  the 
best ;  of  songs  and  ballads,  like  Lillibulkro^  which 
were  sung  in  every  street ;  of  squibs,  reviews,  and 
satirical  poems  and  letters.  Every  onz  joined  in  it, 
and  it  rose  to  importance  in  the  work  of  the  greater 
men  who  mingled  literary  studies  with  their  poHti- 
cal  excitement.  In  politics  all  the  abstract  discus- 
sions we  have  mentioned  ceased  to  be  abstract,  and 
became  personal  and  practical,  and  the  spirit  of  inquiry 
applied  itself  more  closely  to  the  questions  of  every- 
day life.  The  whole  of  this  stirring  literary  life  was 
concentrated  in  London,  where  the  agitation  of  society 
was  hottest ;  and  it  is  round  this  vivid  city  life  that  the 
Literature  of  Queen  Anne  and  the  two  following  reigns 
is  best  grouped. 

112.  It  was,  with  a  few  exceptions,  a  Party 
Literature.  The  Whig  and  Tory  leaders  enlisted 
on  their  sides  the  best  poets  and  prose-writers,  who 
fiercely  satirised  and  unduly  praised  them  under 
names  thinly  disguised.  Our  **  Augustan  Age  "  was 
an  age  of  unbridled  slander.  Personalities  were  sent 
to  and  fro  like  shots  in  battle.  Those  who  could  do 
this  work  well  were  well  rewarded,  but  the  rank  and 
file  of  writers  were  left  to  starve.  Literature  was  thus 
honoured  not  for  itself,  but  for  thj  sake  of  party. 
The  result  was  that  the  abler  men  lowered  it  by 
making  it  a  political  tool,  and  the  smaller  men,  the 
fry  of  Grub  Street,  degraded  it  by  using  it  in  the  same 
way,  only  in  a  baser  manner.  Their  flattery  was  as 
abject  as  their  abuse  was  shameless,  and  both  were 
stupid.     They  received  and  deserved   the  merciless 


136  ENGLISH  LITERATURE,  [chap. 

lashing  which  Pope  was  soon  to  give  them  in  the 
Dimciad.  Being  a  party  literature,  it  naturally  came 
to  study  and  to  look  sharply  into  human  character 
and  into  human  life  as  seen  in  the  great  city.  It 
debated  subjects  of  literary  and  scientific  inquiry  and 
of  philosophy  with  great  ability,  but  without  depth. 
It  discussed  all  the  varieties  of  social  life,  and  painted 
town  society  more  vividly  than  has  been  done  before 
or  since  ;  and  it  was  so  wholly  taken  up  with  this,  that 
country  life  and  its  interests,  except  in  the  writings  of 
Addison,  were  scarcely  touched  by  it  at  all.  Criticism 
being  so  active,  the  form  in  which  thought  was  ex- 
pressed was  now  especially  dwelt  on,  and  the  result 
was  that  the  style  of  English  prose  became  for  the 
first  time  absolutely  simple  and  clear,  and  English 
verse  reached  a  neatness  of  expression  and  a  close- 
ness of  thought  which  was  as  exquisite  as  it  was 
artificial.  At  the  same  time,  and  for  the  same 
reasons,  Nature,  Passion,  and  Imagination  decayed 
in  poetry. 

113.  Alexander  Pope  absorbed  and  reflected  all 
these  elements.  Born  in  1688,  he  wrote  tolerable  verse 
at  twelve  years  old  ;  the  Pastorals  appeared  in  1709, 
and  two  years  afterwards  he  took  full  rank  as  the 
critical  poet  in  the  Essay  on  Ciiticism  (17 11).  The 
next  year  saw  the  first  cast  of  his  Rape  of  the  Lock^ 
the  most  brilliant  occasional  poem  in  our  language. 
This  closed  what  we  may  call  his  first  period.  In 
1 7 13,  when  he  pubHshed  Windsor  Forest^  he  became 
known  to  Swift  and  to  Henry  St.  John,  Lord  Boling- 
broke.  When  these,  with  Gay,  Parnell,  Prior,  Ar- 
buthnot,  and  others,  formed  the  Scriblerus  Club,  Pope 
joined  them,  and  soon  rose  into  great  fame  by  his 
Translation  of  the  Iliad  (1715-1720),  and  by  the 
Translation  of  the  Odyssey  (1723-25),  in  which  he 
was  assisted  by  Fenton  and  Broome.  Being  now  at 
ease,  fjr  he  received  more  than  8,000/.  for  this  work, 
be  pubUshed  from  his  retreat  at  Twickenham,  and  in 


v^i.]        RESTORATION  TO  DEATH  OF  POPE.         137 

bitter  scorn  of  the  poetasters  and  of  all  the  petty 
scribblers  who  annoyed  him,  the  Dunciad^  1728. 
Its  original  hero  was  Lewis  Theobald,  but  when  the 
fourth  book  was  published,  under  Warburton's  influ-  , 
ence,  in  1742,  Colley  Gibber  was  enthroned  as  the 
King  of  Dunces  instead  of  Theobald.  The  fiercest 
and  finest  of  Pope's  satires,  it  closes  his  second  period 
which  breathes  the  savageness  of  Swift.  The  third 
phase  of  Pope's  literary  life  was  closely  linked  to  his 
friend  Bolingbroke.  It  was  in  conversation  with  him 
that  he  originated  the  Essay  on  Man  (1732-4)  and  the 
Imitations  of  Horace.  The  Moral  Essays,  or  Epistles 
to  men  and  women,  were  written  to  praise  those  whom 
he  loved,  and  to  satirise  the  bad  poets  and  the  social 
foUies  of  the  day,  and  all  who  disliked  him  or  his 
party.  In  the  last  few  years  of  his  life.  Bishop  War- 
burton,  the  writer  of  the  Legation  of  Moses  and  editor 
of  Shakspere,  helped  him  to  fit  the  Moral  Essays  into 
the  plan  of  which  the  Essay  on  Man  formed  part. 
Warburton  was  Pope's  last  great  friend;  but  almost 
his  only  old  friend.  By  1740  nearly  all  the  members 
of  his  literary  circle  were  dead,  and  a  new  race  of 
poets  and  writers  had  grown  up.  In  1744  he  died. 
The  masterly  form  into  which  he  threw  the  philosophical 
principles  he  condensed  into  didactic  poetry  make  them 
mere  impressive  than  they  have  a  right  to  be.  The 
Essay  on  Man,  though  its  philosophy  is  poor  and  not 
his  own,  is  crowded  with  lines  that  have  passed  into 
daily  use.  The  Essay  on  Criticism  is  equally  full  of 
critical  precepts  put  with  exquisite  skill.  The  Satires 
and  Epistles  are  didactic,  but  their  excellence  is 
in  the  terse  and  finished  types  of  character,  in  the 
almost  creative  drawing  of  which  Pope  remains  unri- 
valled, even  by  Dryden.  His  translation  of  Homer 
is  made  with  great  literary  art,  but  for  that  very  reason 
it  does  not  make  us  feel  the  simplicity  and  directness 
of  Homer.  It  has  neither  the  manner  of  Homer,  nor 
'  the  spirit  of  the  Greek  life,  just  as  Pope's  descriptions 


138  ENGLISH  LITERATURE,  [chap. 

of  nature  have  neither  the  manner  nor  the  spirit  of 
nature.  The  heroic  couplet^  in  which  he  wrote  nearly 
all  his  work,  he  used  with  a  correctness  that  has  never 
been  surpassed,  but  its  smooth  perfection,  at  length, 
wearies  the  ear.  It  wants  the  breaks  that  passion 
and  unagination  naturally  make.  Finally,  he  was  a 
true  artist,  hating  those  who  degraded  his  art,  and  at 
a  time  when  men  followed  it  for  money,  and  place, 
and  the  applause  of  the  club  and  of  the  town,  he  loved 
it  faithfully  to  the  end,  for  its  own  sake. 

114.  The  Minor  Poets  who  surrounded  Pope  in 
the  first  two-thirds  of  his  life  did  not  approach  his 
genius.  Richard  Blackmore  endeavoured  to  restore 
the  epic  in  his  Frmce  Arthuj-,  1695,  and  Samuel 
Garth's  mock  heroic  poem  of  the  Dispensary  appeared 
along  with  John  Pomfret's  poems  in  1699.  In  lyor, 
Defoe's  lYueborn  Englis/wian  defended  William  III. 
against  those  who  said  he  was  a  foreigner,  and  Prior's 
finest  ode  the  Carmen  Seculare,  took  up  the  same  cause. 
John  PhiUps  is  known  by  his  Miltonic  burlesque  of 
the  Splendid  Shillings  and  his  Cyder  was  a  Georgic  of 
the  apple.  Matthew  Green's  Spleen  and  Ambrose 
Philip's  Pastorals  were  contemporary  with  Pope's  first 
poetry ;  and  Gay's  Shepherd's  Week,  six  pastorals,  1 7 14, 
were  as  lightly  wrought  as  his  Fables,  The  political 
satires  of  Swift  were  coarse,  but  always  hit  home.  Ad- 
dison celebrated  the  Battle  of  Blenheim  in  the  Cam- 
paign, and  his  sweet  grace  is  found  in  some  devotional 
pieces ;  while  Prior's  charming  ease  is  best  shown  in 
the  light  narrative  poetry  which  we  may  say  began  with 
him  in  the  reign  of  WiUiam  III.  In  Pope's  later  life 
an  entirely  new  impulse  came  upon  poetry,  and 
changed  it  root  and  branch.  It  arose  in  Ramsay's 
Gentle  Shepherd,  1725,  and  in  Thomson's  Seasons, 
1730,  and  it  rang  the  knell  of  the  manner  and  the 
spirit  of  the  critical  school. 

115.  The  Prose  Literature  of  Pope's  time  col- 
lects itself   round  four   great  names,   Swift,  Defoe, 


VI.]        RESTORA  TION  TO  DEA  TH  OF  POPE,         139 

Addison,  and  Bishop  Berkeley,  and  they  all  exhibit 
those  elements  of  the  age  of  which  I  have  spoken. 
Jonathan  Swift  was  the  keenest  of  poUtical  parti- 
zans.  The  t^attle  of  the  Books ^  or  the  literary  fight 
about  the  Letters  of  Phalaris,  and  the  Tale  of  a  Tub, 
a  satire  on  the  Presbyterians  and  the  Papists,  made 
his  reputation  in  1704  and  established  him  as  a  satirist. 
Swift  left  the  Whig  for  the  Tory  party,  and  his  political 
tracts  brought  hun  court  favour  and  literary  fame. 
On  the  fall  of  the  Tory  party  at  the  accession  of 
George  I.,  he  retired  to  the  Deanery  of  St.  Patrick  in 
Ireland  an  embittered  man,  and  the  Drapiej^s  Letters 
(1724)  written  against  Wood's  halfpence,  gained  him 
popularity  in  a  country  that  he  hated.  In  1726,  his 
inventive  genius,  his  savage  satire,  and  his  cruel  indig- 
nation with  life,  were  all  shown  in  Gullivers  Travels. 
The  voyage  to  Liiliput  and  Brobdingnag  satirised  the 
politics  and  manners  of  England  and  Europe;  that 
to  Laputa  mocked  the  philosophers  ;  and  the  last,  to 
the  country  of  the  Houyhnhnms,  lacerated  and  defiled 
the  whole  body  of  humanity.  No  English  is  more 
robust  than  Swift's,  no  wit  more  gross,  no  life  in 
private  and  public  more  sad  and  proud,  no  death 
more  pitiable.  He  died  in  1745  hopelessly  insane. 
Daniel  Defoe  was  almost  as  vigorous  a  political 
writer  as  Swift.  His  vein  as  a  pamphleteer  seems  to 
have  been  inexhaustible,  and  the  style  of  his  tracts 
was  as  roughly  persuasive  as  it  was  popular.  Above 
all  he  was  the  journalist.  His  Reinen*^  published 
twice  a  week  for  a  year,  was  wholly  written  by  him- 
self; but  he  **  founded,  conducted,  and  wrote  for  a 
host  of  other  newspapers,"  and  filled  them  with  every 
subject  of  the  day.  His  tales  grew  out  of  matters 
treated  of  in  his  journals,  and  his  best  art  lay  in  the 
way  he  built  up  these  stories  out  of  mere  suggestions. 
**  The  little  art  he  is  truly  master  of,  said  one  of  his 
contemporaries,  is  of  forging  a  story  and  imposing  it 
-on  the  world  for  truth."     His  circumstantial  inven- 


I40  ENGLISH  LITERATURE.  [chap. 

tion,  combined  with  a  style  which  exactly  fits  it  by  its 
simpUcity,  is  the  root  of  the  charm  of  the  great  story 
by  which  he  chiefly  Kves  •  in  Hterature.  Robinson 
Crusoe^  ijig^  equalled  Gulliver's  Travels  in  truthful 
representation,  and  excelled  them  in  invention.  The 
story  lives  and  charms  from  day  to  day.  With  his 
other  tales  it  makes  him  our  first  true  writer  of  fiction. 
But  none  of  his  stories  are  real  novels ;  that  is,  they 
have  no  plot  to  the  working  out  of  which  the  cha- 
racters and  the  events  contribute.  They  form  the 
transition  however  from  the  slight  tale  and  the 
romance  of  the  Elizabethan  time  to  the  finished  novel 
of  Richardson  and  Fielding. 

ii6.  Metaphysical  Literature,  which  drifted 
chiefly  into  theology,  was  enriched  by  the  work 
of  Bishop  Berkeley.  His  Minute  Philosopher 
and  other  works  questioned  the  real  existence  of 
matter,  and  founded  on  the  denial  of  it  an  answer  to 
the  Enghsh  Deists,  round  whom  in  the  first  half  of 
the  eighteenth  century  centred  the  struggle  between 
the  claims  of  natural  and  revealed  religion.  Shaftes- 
bury, Bolingbroke,  and  Wollaston,  Tindal,  Toland,  and 
Collins,  on  the  Deists'  side,  were  opposed  by  Clarke, 
by  Bentley,  whose  name  is  best  known  as  the  founder 
of  the  true  school  of  classical  criticism,  by  Bishop 
Butler,  and  by  Bishop  Warburton.  Bishop  Butler's 
acute  and  solid  reasoning  treated  in  his  Ser??ions  the 
subject  of  Morals,  inquiring  what  was  the  particular 
nature  of  man,  and  hence  determining  the  course  of 
life  correspondent  to  this  nature.  His  Analogy  oj 
Reli^ion^  Natural  and  Revealed^  to  the  Constitution  and 
Course  of  Nature,  1736,  endeavours  to  make  peace 
between  authority  and  reason,  and  has  become  a 
standard  book.  I  may  mention  here  a  social  satire, 
The  Fable  of  the  Bees,  by  Mandeville,  half  poem,  half 
prose  dialogue,  and  finished  in  1729.  It  tried  to 
prove  that  the  vices  of  society  are  the  foundation 
of  civilisation,  and  is  the  first  of  a  new  set  of  books 


VI.]        RESTORATION  TO  DEATH  OF  POPE.         141 

which  marked  the  rise  in  England  of  the  bold 
speculations  on  the  nature  and  ground  of  society 
to  which  the  French  Revolution  gave  afterwards  so 
great  an  impulse. 

117.  The  Periodical  Ebsay  is  connected  with 
the  names  of  Joseph  Addison  and  Sir  Richard 
Steele.  This  gay,  light,  and  graceful  kind  of  litera- 
ture, differing  from  such  Essays  as  Bacon's  as  good 
conversation  about  a  subject  differs  from  a  clear 
analysis  of  all  its  points,  was  begun  in  France 
by  Montaigne  in  1580.  Charles  Cotton,  a  wit  of 
Charles  Il/s  time,  retranslated  Montaigne's  Essays, 
and  they  soon  found  imitators  in  Cowley  and  Sir  W. 
Temple.  But  the  periodical  Essay  was  created  by  Steele 
and  Addison.  It  was  at  first  published  three  times  a 
week,  then  daily,  and  it  was  anonymous,  and  both 
these  characters  necessarily  changed  its  form  from 
that  of  an  Essay  of  Montaigne.  Steele  began  it  in 
the  Tatler,  1709,  and  it  treated  of  everything  that  was 
going  on  in  the  world.  He  paints  as  a  social  humourist 
the  whole  age  of  Queen  Anne — the  political  and 
literary  disputes,  the  fine  gentlemen  and  ladies,  the 
characters  of  men,  the  humours  of  society,  the  new 
book,  the  new  play  ;  we  live  in  the  very  streets  and 
drawing-rooms  of  old  London.  Addison  soon  joined 
him,  first  in  the  Tatler,  afterwards  in  the  Spectator, 
1 7 II.  His  work  is  more  critical,  literary,  and  didactic 
than  bis  companion's.  The  characters  he  introduces, 
such  as  Sir  Roger  de  Coverley,  are  finished  studies  after 
nature,  and  their  talk  is  easy  and  dramatic.  No 
humour  is  more  fine  and  tender;  and,  like  Chaucer's, 
it  is  never  bitter.  The  style  adds  to  the  charm  :  in  its 
_  varied  cadence  and  subtle  ease  it  has  not  been  sur- 
passed within  its  own  peculiar  sphere  in  England  ;  and 
it  seems  to  grow  out  of  the  subjects  treated  of.  Addi- 
son's work  was  a  great  one,  lightly  done.  The  Specta- 
tor, the  Guardian^  and  the  F?'eeholder,  in  his  hands, 
-  gave  a  better  tone  to  manners,  and  hence  to  morals, 


142  ENGLISH  LITER  A  TURE.  [cHAR 

and  a  gentler  one  to  political  and  literary  criticism. 
The  essays  published  every  Friday  were  chiefly  on 
literary  subjects,  the  Saturday  essays  chiefly  on  religious 
subjects.  The  former  popularised  literature,  so  that 
culture  spread  among  the  middle  classes  and  crept 
down  to  the  country ;  the  latter  popularised  religion. 
*'  I  have  brought,"  he  says,  '*  philosophy  out  of  closets 
and  libraries,  schools  and  colleges,  to  dwell  in  clubs 
and  assemblies,  at  tea-tables  and  in  coffee-houses." 

THE   DRAMA    FROM   THE   RESTORATION   TO    1780. 

118.  The  Drama  after  the  Restoration  took  the 
tone  of  the  court  both  in  politics  and  religion,  but  its 
partizanship  decayed  under  William  III.,  and  died  in 
the  reign  of  Queen  Anne.  The  court  of  Charles  11. , 
which  the  plays  now  written  represented  much  more 
than  they  did  the  national  life,  gave  the  drama  the 
"genteel "  ease  and  the  immorality  of  its  society,  and 
encouraged  it  to  find  new  impulses  from  the  tragedy 
and  comedy  of  Spain  and  of  France.  The  French 
romances  of  the  school  of  Calprenede  and  Scudery 
furnished  plots  to  the  play-writers.  The  great  French 
dramatists,  Corneille,  Racine,  and  Moliere  were 
translated  and  borrowed  from  again  and  again.  The 
"  three  unities "  of  Corneille,  and  rime  instead  of 
blank  verse  as  the  vehicle  of  tragedy,  were  adopted,  but 
**  the  spirit  of  neither  the  serious  nor  the  comic  drama 
of  France  could  then  be  transplanted  into  England." 

Two  acting  companies  were  formed  on  Charles  II.'s 
return,  under  Thomas  Killigrew  and  D'Avenant; 
actresses  came  on  the  stage  for  the  first  time,  the 
ballet  was  introduced,  and  scenery  began  to  be  largely 
used.  Dryden,  whose  masterly  force  was  sure  to  strike 
the  key-note  that  others  followed,  began  his  comedies 
in  1663,  but  soon  afterwards,  following  Robert  Boyle, 
Earl  of  Orrery,  who  was  the  father  of  the  heroic  dra?na, 
turned  to  tragedy  in  the  Indian  Queen,  1664.     His 


VI.]        RESTORATION  TO  DEATH  OF  POPE.         143 

next  play,  the  Indian  Emperour^  established  for  a  time 
the  heroic  couplet  as  the  dramatic  verse.  His  defence 
of  rime  in  the  Essay  on  Dramatic  Poesy  asserted  the 
originality  of  the  English  school,  and  denied  that  it 
followed  the  French.  The  masterpiece  of  the  Conquest 
of  Granada  was  followed  by  the  burlesque  of  the  Ee- 
hearsal,  written  by  the  Duke  of  Buckingham,  in  which 
the  bombastic  extravagance  of  the  heroic  plays  was 
ridiculed.  Dryden  now  changed  his  dramatic  manner, 
and,  following  Shakspere,  ^'disencumbered  himself  from 
rime"  in  his  fine  tragedy  oi  All  for  Love,  and  showed 
his  power  of  low  comedy  in  the  Spanish  Friar,  After 
the  Revolution,  his  tragedy  of  Don  Sebastian  ranks 
high,  but  not  higher  than  his  brilliantly-written  comedy 
of  Amphitryon,  1690.  Dryden  is  the  representative 
dramatist  of  the  Restoration.  Among  the  tragedians 
who  followed  his  method  and  possessed  their  own, 
those  most  worthy  of  notice  are  Nat  Lee  (1650-90), 
whose  Eival  Queens,  1667,  deserves  its  praise  ;  Thomas 
Otway,  whose  two  pathetic  tragedies,  the  Orphan  and 
Vefiice  Preserved,  still  keep  the  stage;  and  Thomas 
Southerne  whose  Fatal  Marriage,  1694,  was  revived 
by  Garrick. 

It  was  in  comedy,  however,  that  the  dramatists 
excelled,  Etherege,  Sedley,  Mrs.  Behn,  Lacy,  and 
Shadwell  carry  on  to  the  Revolution  that  light  Comedy 
of  Manners  which  William  Wycherley's  (1640-17 15) 
gross  vigour  and  natural  plots  lifted  into  an  odious 
excellence  in  such  plays  as  the  Country  Wife  and  the 
Plain  Dealer.  Three  great  comedians  followed 
Wycherley — William  Congreve  (1672-1728),  whose 
well-bred  ease  is  almost  as  remarkable  as  his  bril- 
liant wit;  Sir  John  Vanbrugh  (t666(?)-i726),  and 
George  Farquhar  (1678-1707),  both  of  whom  have 
quick  invention,  but  the  gaiety  and  ease  of  Van- 
orugh  is  superior  to  that  of  Farquhar.  The  in- 
decency of  all  these  writers  is  infamous,  but  it  is 
partly  forgotten  in  their  swift  and  sustained  vivacity. 
13 


144  ENGLISH  LITERA  TURE.  [chap. 

This  immorality  produced  Jeremy  Collier's  famous 
attack  on  the  stage,  1698;  and  the  growth  of  a 
higher  tone  in  society,  uniting  with  this  attack, 
began  to  purify  the  drama,  though  Mrs.  Centlivre's 
comedies,  during  the  reign  of  Queen  Anne,  show 
no  trace  of  purity.  Steele,  at  this  time,  whose 
Lying  Lover  makes  him  the  father  of  sentimental 
(omedy,  wrote  all  his  plays  with  a  moral  purpose. 
Nicholas  Rowe,  whose  melancholy  tragedies  "are 
occupied  with  themes  of  heroic  love,"  is  dull,  but 
never  gross ;  while  Addison's  ponderous  tragedy  of  Cato, 
17 13,  praised  by  Voltaire  as  the  first  tragedie  raison- 
nahle,  in  its  total  rejection  of  the  drama  of  nature 
for  the  classical  style,  *'  definitely  marks  an  epoch  in 
the  history  of  English  tragedy,  an  epoch  of  decay,  on 
which  no  recovery  has  followed."  Comedy,  however, 
had  still  a  future.  The  Beggars'  Opera  of  Gay,  1728, 
revived  an  old  form  of  drama  in  a  new  way.  Colley 
Cibber  carried  on  into  George  II.'s  time  the  light  and 
the  sentimental  comedy  ;  Fielding  made  the  stage  the 
vehicle  of  criticism  on  the  follies,  literature,  and  politics 
of  his  time ;  and  Foote  and  Garrick  did  the  same  kind 
of  work  in  their  farces. 

The  influence  of  the  Restoration  drama  continues, 
past  this  period,  in  the  manner  of  Goldsmith  and 
Sheridan  who  wrote  between  1768  and  1778;  but 
the  exquisite  humour  of  Goldsmith's  Goodnatured 
Man  and  She  Stoops  to  Conquer,  and  the  wit,  almost 
as  brilliant  and  more  epigrammatic  than  Congreve's, 
of  Sheridan's  Rivals  and  the  School  for  Scatidal,  are 
not  deformed  by  the  indecency  of  the  Restoration. 
Both  were  Irishmen,  but  Goldsmith  has  more  of  the 
Celtic  grace  and  Sheridan  of  the  Celtic  wit.  The 
sentimental  comedy  was  carried  on  into  the  next  age 
by  Macklin,  Murphy,  Cumberland,  the  Colmans,  and 
many  others,  but  we  may  say  that  with  Sheridan  the 
history  of  the  elder  English  Drama  closes.  That 
which  belongs  to  our  century  is  a  different  thing. 


VII.]    PROSE  LITERAl^URE  FROM  \^a,l  TO  \]Z().       145 


CHAPTER  VII. 

PROSE  LITERATURE  FROM  THE  DEATH  OF  POPE  AND 
OF  SWIFT  TO  THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION,  AND  FROM 
THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION  TO  DEATH  OF  SCOTT. 

1745—1832. 

Richardson's  Pamela,  1740- —  Fielding's  Joseph  Andrews, 
1742-  —  Smollett's  Rodrick  Random  and  Richardson's 
Clarissa  Harloive,  1748- — Fielding's  Tom  Jones,  1749-  — 
Johnson's  Dictionary,  1755. — Sterne's  Tristram  Shandy, 
1759.— Hume's  History  of  England,  completed  1761  — 
Goldsmith's  Vicar  of  Wakefield,  1766-  —  Adam  Smith's 
Wealth  of  Nations,  1776.— Gibbon's  Decline  a7id  Fall  of  the 
Romaft  Empire,  completed  1788  — Boswell's  Life  of  Johnson, 
1791. —Burke's  Writings,  from  1756-1797.— Miss  Austen's 
Novels,  1811-1817.— Scott's  A^c^^/j,  1814-1831. 

119.  Prose  Literature. — The  rapid  increase  of 
manufactures,  science,  and  prosperity  which  began 
with  the  middle  of  the  eighteenth  century  is  paral- 
leled by  the  growth  of  Literature.  The  general  causes 
of  this  growth  were  — 

ist,  That  a  good  prose  style  had  been  per- 
fected, and  the  method  of  writing  being  made  easy, 
production  increased.  Men  were  born,  as  it  were, 
into  a  good  school  of  the  art  of  composition. 

2ndly,  The  long  peace  after  the  accession  of  the 
House  of  Hanover  had  left  England  at  rest,  and 
given  it  wealth.  The  reclaiming  of  waste  tracts,  the 
increased  wealth  and  trade,  made  better  communica- 
tion necessary ;  and  the  country  was  soon  covered  with 
a  network  of  highways.  The  leisure  gave  time  to 
men  to  think  and  write :  the  quicker  interchange 
between  the  capital  and  the  country  spread  over 
England  the  literature  of  the  capital,  and  stirred  men 


146  ENGLISH  LITERATURE.  [chap. 

everywhere  to  express  his  thoughts.  The  coaching 
services  and  the  post  carried  the  new  book  and  the 
literary  criticism  to  the  villages,  and  awoke  the  men 
of  genius  there,  who  might  otherwise  have  been  silent. 

3rdly,  The  Press  sent  far  and  wide  the  news  of 
the  day,  and  grew  in  importance  till  it  contained  the 
opinions  and  writings  of  men  like  Johnson.  Such  seed 
produced  literary  work  in  the  country.  Neivspapers 
now  began  to  play  a  larger  part  in  literature.  They 
rose  under  the  Commonwealth,  but  became  important 
when  the  censorship  which  reduced  them  to  a  mere 
broadsheet  of  news  was  removed  after  the  Revolution 
of  1688.  The  political  sleep  of  the  age  of  the  two 
first  Georges  hindered  their  progress ;  but  in  the  reign 
of  George  III.,  after  a  struggle  with  which  the  name  of 
John  Wilkes  and  the  author  of  the  Letters  of  Junius  are 
connected,  and  which  lasted  from  1764  to  1771,  the 
press  claimed  and  obtained  the  right  to  criticise  the 
conduct  airid  measures  of  Ministers  and  Parliament 
and  the  King ;  and  the  further  right  to  publish  and 
comment  on  the  debates  in  the  two  Houses. 

4thly,  Communication  with  the  Continent 
had  increased  during  the  peaceable  times  of  Walpole, 
and  the  wars  that  followed  made  it  still  easier.  With 
its  increase  two  new  and  great  outbursts  of  literature 
told  upon  England.  France  sent  the  works  of  Montes- 
quieu, of  Voltaire,  Rousseau,  Diderot,  D'Alembert, 
and  the  rest  of  the  liberal  thinkers  who  were  called 
the  Encyclopaedists,  to  influence  and  quicken  English 
literature  on  all  the  great  subjects  that  belong  to  the 
social  and  political  life  of  man.  Afterwards,  the  fresh 
German  movement,  led  by  Lessing  and  others,  and 
carried  on  by  Goethe  and  Schiller,  added  its  impulse 
to  the  poetical  school  that  arose  in  England  along 
with  the  French  Revolution.  These  were  the  general 
causes  of  the  rapid  growth  of  literature  from  the  time 
of  the  death  o'"  Swift  and  Pope. 

120.     Prose  Literature  between  1745  and  the 


VII.]      PROSE  LITER  A  TURE  FROM  1 745  TO  1 789.      147 

French  Revolution  may  be  said  to  be  bound  up  with 
the  Uterary  Uves  of  one  man  and  his  friends.  Samuel 
Johnson,  born  in  1709,  and  whose  first  prose  work, 
the  Life  of  Savage^  appeared  in  1744,  was  the  last 
representative  of  the  literary  king,  who,  like  Dryden 
and  Pope,  held  a  court  in  London.  Poor  and 
unknown,  he  worked  his  way  to  fame,  and  his  first 
poem,  the  London^  1738,  satirized  the  town  where 
he  loved  to  live.  He  carried  on  the  periodical 
essays  in  the  Rambler  and  Idler^  1750-52,  but  in 
them  grace  and  lightness,  the  essence  of  this  kind 
of  essay,  were  lost.  Several  other  series  followed 
and  ceased  in  1787,  but  the  only  one  worth  read- 
ing, for  its  fanciful  stories  and  agreeable  satire  of 
the  manners  of  the  time,  is  Goldsmith's  Citizen  of 
the  World,  Driven  by  poverty,  Johnson  under- 
took a  greater  work  ;  the  Dictionary  of  the  English 
Language,  1755 — and  his  celebrated  letter  to  Lord 
Chesterfield  concerning  its  publication,  gave  the 
death-blow  to  patronage,  and  makes  Johnson  the 
first  of  the  modern  literary  men  who,  independent 
of  patrons,  live  by  their  pen  and  find  in  the  public 
their  only  paymaster.  He  represents  thus  a  new  class. 
In  1759  he  set  on  foot  the  Didactic  Novel  in  Rasselas, 
and  in  1781  his  Lives  of  the  Foets  lifted  Biography  into 
a  higher  place  in  Hterature.  But  he  did  even  more 
for  literature  as  a  converser,  as  the  chief  talker  of  a 
literary  club,  than  by  writing,  and  we  know  exactly 
what  a  power  he  was  by  the  vivid  Biography,  the  best 
in  our  language,  which  James  Boswell,  with  fussy  de- 
votedness,  made  of  his  master  in  1791.  Side  by  side 
with  Johnson  stands  Oliver  Goldsmith,  whose  graceful 
and  pure  English  is  a  pleasant  contrast  to  the  loaded 
Latinism  of  Johnson's  style.  The  Vicar  of  Wakefield, 
the  LListory  of  Animated  Nature  are  at  one  in  charm, 
and  the  latter  is  full  of  that  love  of  natural  scenery,  the 
sentiment  of  which  is  absent  from  Johnson's  Journey 
"  to  the  Western  Isles,     Both  these  men  were  masters  of 


148  ENGLISH  LITER  A  TURE.  [chap. 

Miscellaneous  Literature,  and  in  that  class,  I  mention 
here,  as  belonging  to  the  latter  half  of  the  eighteenth 
century,  Edmund  Burke's  Vindicatio7i  of  Natural 
Society^  a  parody  of  Bolingbroke  ;  and  his  I?iquiiy  into 
the  Origin  of  our  Ideas  of  the  Sublime  and  Beautiful, 
a  book  which  in  1757  introduced  him  to  Johnson. 
Nor  ought  we  to  forget  Sir  Joshua  Reynolds,  another 
of  Johnson's  friends,  who  first  made  English  Art 
literary  in  his  Discourses  on  Fainting ;  nor  Horace 
Walpole,  whose  Anecdotes  of  Fainting,  1761,  still 
please  ;  and  whose  familiar  Letters,  malicious,  light  as 
froth,  but  amusing,  retail  with  liveliness  all  the  gossip 
of  the  time. 

121.  The  Novel. — "There  is  more  knowledge  of 
the  heart,"  said  Johnson,  "  in  one  letter  of  Richard- 
son's than  in  all  Tom  fonesj^  and  the  saying  introduces 
Samuel  Richardson  and  Henry  Fielding,  the 
makers  of  the  Modern  Novel.  Wholly  distinct  from 
merely  narrative  stories  like  Defoe's^  the  true  novel  is  a 
story  wrought  round  the  passion  of  love  to  a  tragic  or 
joyous  conclusion.  Its  form,  far  more  flexible  than 
that  of  the  drama,  admits  of  almost  infinite  develop- 
ment. The  whole  of  human  life,  at  any  time,  at  any 
place  in  the  world,  is  its  subject,  and  its  vast  sphere 
accounts  for  its  vast  production.  Famela,  1740,  ap- 
peared while  Pope  was  yet  alive,  and  was  the  first  of 
Richardson's  novels.  Like  Clarissa  Harlowe,  1748, 
it  was  written  in  the  form  of  letters.  The  third  of  these 
books  was  Sir  Charles  Grandison.  They  are  novels  of 
Sentiment,  and  their  purposeful  morality  and  religion 
mark  the  change  which  had  taken  place  in  the  morals 
and  faith  of  literature  since  the  preceding  age. 

Clarissa  Harlowe  is  a  masterpiece.  Richardson 
himself  is  mastered  day  by  day  by  the  passionate 
creation  of  his  characters  :  and  their  variety  and  the 
variety  of  their  passions  are  drawn  with  a  slow, 
diffusive,  elaborate  intensity  which  penetrates  into 
the  subtlest  windings  of  the  human  heart.    But  all 


VII.]    PROSE  LITER  A  TURE  FROM  1 745  TO  1 789.      149 

the  characters  are  grouped  round  and  enlighten 
Clarissa,  the  pure  and  ideal  star  of  womanhood. 
The  pathos  of  the  book,  its  sincerity,  its  minute 
reality  have  always,  but  slowly,  impassioned  its 
readers,  and  it  stirred  as  absorbing  an  interest  in 
France  as  it  did  in  England.  "  1  ake  care,"  said , 
Diderot,  "not  to  open  these  enchanting  books,- 
if  you  have  any  duties  to  fulfil."  Henry  Fielding 
followed  Pamela  with  Joseph  Andrews^  1742,  and 
Clarissa  with  Tom  Jones,  1749.  At  the  same  time, 
in  1748,  appeared  Tobias  Smollett's  first  novel, 
Roderick  Randotn,  Both  wrote  many  other  stories, 
but  in  the  natural  growth  and  development  of 
the  story,  and  in  the  infitting  of  the  characters  and 
events  towards  the  conclusion,  Tom  Jones  is  the 
English  model  of  the  novel.  The  constructive  power 
of  Fielding  is  absent  from  Smollett,  but  in  mere 
inventive  tale-telling  and  in  cynical  characterisation, 
he  is  not  easily  equalled.  Fielding  draws  EngUsh  life 
both  in  town  and  country  with  a  coarse  and  realistic 
pencil :  Smollett  is  led  beyond  the  truth  of  nature 
into  caricature.  Ten  years  had  thus  sufficed  to 
create  a  wholly  new  literature. 

Laurence  Sterne  published  the  first  part  of  Tris- 
tram Shandy  in  the  same  year  as  Rasselas,  1759. 
Tristram  Shandy  and  the  Sentimental  Journey  are 
scarcely  novels.  They  have  no  plot,  they  can  scarcely 
be  said  to  have  any  story.  The  story  of  Tristram 
Shandy  wanders  like  a  man  in  a  labyrinth,  and  the 
humour  is  as  labyrinthine  as  the  story.  Its  humourous 
note  is  very  remote  and  subtle  ;  and  the  sentiment 
is  sometimes  true,  but  mostly  affected.  But  a  certain 
unity  is  given  to  the  book  by  the  admirable  consist- 
ency of  the  characters.  A  little  later,  in  1766,  Gold- 
smith's Vicar  of  Wakefield  was  the  first,  and  perhaps 
the  most  charming,  of  all  those  novels  which  we  may 
call  idyllic,  which  describe  in  a  pure  and  gentle  style 
the  simple  loves  and  lives  of  country  people.     Lastly, 


ISO  -  EA  GLISH  LITER  A  TURE.  [chap. 

but  Still  in  the  same  circle  of  Johnson's  friends,  Miss 
Barney's  Evelina,  1778,  and  her  Cecilia,  in  which  we 
detect  Johnson's  Roman  hand,  were  the  first  novels  of 
society. 

122.  History  shared  in  the  progress  made  after  1745 
in  prose  writing,  and  was  raised  into  the  rank  of  liter- 
ature by  three  of  Johnson's  contemporaries.  All  of  them 
were  influenced  by  the  French  school,  by  Montesquieu 
and  Voltaire.  David  Hume's  History  of  England, 
finished  in  1761,  is,  in  the  writer's  endeavour  to  make 
it  a  philosophic  whole,  in  its  clearness  of  narrative 
and  purity  of  style,  our  first  literary  history.  But  he  is 
neither  exact,  nor  does  he  care  to  be  exact.  He  does 
not  love  his  subject,  and  he  wants  sympathy  with 
mankind  and  with  his  country.  His  manner  is  the  man- 
ner of  Volraire,  passionless,  keen,  and  elegant.  Dr. 
Robertson,  Hume's  friend,  and  also  a  Scotchman, 
was  a  careful  and  serious,  but  also  a  cold  writer.  His 
Histories  of  Scotland,  of  Charles  V.,  and  of  America 
show  how  historical  interest  again  began  to  reach  be- 
yond England.  Their  style  is  literary,  but  they  fail  in 
philosophical  insight  and  in  imagination.  Edward 
Gibbon,  whose  Decline  and  Fall  of  the  Roman  Empire, 
completed  in  1788,  gave  a  new  impulse  and  a  new 
model  to  historical  literature,  had  no  more  sympathy 
with  humanity  than  Hume,  and  his  irony  lowers  through- 
out the  human  value  of  his  history.  But  he  had 
creative  power,  originality,  and  the  imagination  of  his 
subject.  It  was  at  Rome  in  1764,  while  musing  amid 
the  ruins  of  the  Capitol,  that  the  idea  of  writing  his 
book  started  to  his  mind,  and  his  conception  of  the 
work  was  that  of  an  artist.  Rome,  eastern  and 
western,  was  painted  in  the  centre  of  the  world,  dying 
slowly  like  a  lion.  Around  it  and  towards  it  he  drew 
all  the  nations  and  hordes  and  faiths  that  wrought  its 
ruin  ;  told  their  stories  from  the  beginning,  and  the 
results  on  themselves  and  on  the  world  of  their  vic- 
tories    over    Rome.     This    imaginative    conception, 


VII.]    PROSE  LITERA  TURE  FROM  1745  TO  1789.      151 

together  with  the  collecting  and  use  of  every  detail  of 
the  arts  and  costumes  and  manners  of  the  times  he 
described,  the  reading  and  use  of  all  the  contemporary 
literature,  the  carefal  geographical  detail,  the  marshal- 
ling of  all  this  information  with  his  facts,  the  power 
with  which  he  moved  over  this  vast  arena,  and  the  use 
of  a  full,  but  too  grandiose  a  style,  to  give  importance 
to  the  subject,  makes  him  the  one  historian  of  the 
eighteenth  century,  whom  modern  research  recognises 
as  its  master.  Only  in  two  chapters,  the  famous  ones 
on  Christianity,  out  of  seventy-one,  and  during  twenty- 
three  years  of  work,  does  Gibbon  yield  to  the  prejudice 
which  is  the  common  fault  of  historians. 

123.  Philosophical  and  Political  Literature. — 
Hume,  following  Locke,  inquired  into  the  nature  of  the 
human  understanding,  and  based  philosophy  upon 
psychology.  He  constructed  a  science  of  man  \  and 
finally  limited  all  our  knowledge  of  reality  to  the 
world  of  phenomena  revealed  to  us  by  experience.  In 
morals  he  made  utility  the  only  measure  of  virtue. 
The  first  of  his  books,  the  Treatise  of  Human  Nature^ 
1739,  was  written  in  France,  and  was  followed  by  the 
Fhilosophical  Essays  in  1748,  and  by  the  Inquiry 
Concerning  the  Principles  of  Morals  in  175 1.  The 
Dialogues  on  Natural  Religion  were  not  published  till 
after  his  death.  These  were  his  chief  philosophical 
works.  But  in  1741-42,  he  published  two  volumes  of 
Essays  Moral  and  Political,  from  which  we  might 
infer  a  poliucal  philosophy;  and  in  1752  the  Political 
Discourses  appeared,  and  they  have  been  fairly  said  to 
be  the  cradle  of  political  economy.  But  that  subject 
was  afterwards  taken  up  by  Adam  Smith,  a  friend  of 
Hume's,  whose  book  on  the  Moral  Sentimejits,  ^759* 
classes  him  also  with  the  philosophers  of  Scotland. 
His  Wealth  of  Nations,  1776,  by  its  theory  that  labour 
is  the  source  of  wealth,  and  that  to  give  the  labourer 
absolute  freedom  to  pursue  his  own  interest  in  his  own 
•way  is  the  best  means  of  increasing  the  wealth  of  the 


152  ENGLISH  LITER  A  TURE,  [chap. 

country ;  by  its  proof  that  all  laws  made  to  restrain, 
or  to  shape,  or  to  promote  commerce,  were  stumbling- 
blocks  in  the  way  of  the  wealth  of  a  state,  he  created 
the  Science  of  Pohtical  Economy,  and  started  the 
theory  and  practice  of  Free  Trade.  All  the  questions 
of  labour  and  capital  were  now  placed  on  a  scientific 
basis,  and  since  that  time  the  literature  of  the  whole 
of  the  subject  has  engaged  great  thinkers.  As  the 
immense  increase  of  the  industry,  wealth,  and  com- 
merce of  the  country  from  1720  to  1770  had  thus 
stirred  inquiry  into  the  laws  which  regulate  wealth,  so 
now  the  Methodist  movement,  beginning  in  1738, 
awoke  an  interest  in  the  poor,  and  gave  the  first 
impulse  to  popular  education.  Social  Reform  became 
a  literary  subject,  and  fills  a  large  space  until  1832, 
when  political  reform  brought  forward  new  subjects, 
and  the  old  subjects  under  new  forms.  This  new 
philanthropy  was  stirred  into  further  growth  by  the 
theories  of  the  French  Revolution,  and  these  theories, 
taking  violent  effect  in  France,  roused  into  opposition 
the  genius  of  Edmund  Burke.  Unlike  Hume,  whose 
politics  were  elaborated  in  the  study,  Burke  wrote 
his  political  tracts  and  speeches  face  to  face  with 
events  and  upon  them.  Philosophical  reasoning 
and  poetic  passion  were  wedded  together  in  them 
on  the  side  of  Conservatism,  and  every  art  of  elo- 
quence was  used  with  the  mastery  that  imagination 
gives.  In  1766  he  defended  Lord  Rockingham's 
administration ;  he  was  then  wrongly  suspected  of  the 
authorship  of  the  Letters  of  Junius^  political  invectives 
(1769-72),  whose  trenchant  style  has  preserved  them 
to  this  day.  Burke's  Thoughts  on  the  Cause  of  the 
p7'esent  Discontents,  1773,  perhaps  the  best  of  his  works 
in  point  of  style,  maintained  an  aristocratic  govern- 
ment ;  and  the  next  year  appeared  his  famous  Speech 
on  American  Taxation,  while  that  on  American  Con- 
ciliation, 1775,  was  answered  by  his  friend  Johnson  in 
Taxation  no   Tyranny,      The  most  powerful  of  his 


VII.]    PROSE  LITERATURE  FROM  1789  TO  1832.      153 

works  were  the  Reflections  on  the  French  Revolution, 
1790,  and  the  Letters  on  a  Regicide  Peace  (1796-97). 
The  first  of  these,  answered  by  Thomas  Paine's  Rights 
of  Man,  and  by  James  Mackintosh's  Vindicice  Gallicce, 
spread  over  all  England  a  terror  of  the  principles  of 
the  Revolution ;  the  second  doubled  the  eagerness  of 
England  to  carry  on  the  war  with  France.  All  his 
work  is  more  hterature  than  oratory.  Many  of  his 
speeches  enthralled  their  hearers,  but  many  more  put 
them  to  sleep.  The  very  men,  however,  who  slept 
under  him  in  the  House  read  over  and  over  again  the 
same  speech  when  pubUshed  with  renewed  dehght. 
Goldsmith's  praise  of  him— that  he  *' wound  himself 
into  his  subject  like  a  serpent''- — gives  the  reason  why 
he  sometimes  failed  as  an  orator,  why  he  always 
succeeded  as  a  writer. 

124.  Prcse  from  1789-1832.  Miscellaneous. 
— The  death  of  Johnson  marks  a  true  period  in 
our  later  prose  literature.  London  had  ceased 
then  to  be  the  only  literary  centre.  Books  were 
produced  in  all  parts  of  the  country,  and  Edinburgh 
had  its  own  famous  school  of  literature.  The  doc- 
trines of  the  French  Revolution  w^ere  eagerly  sup- 
ported and  eagerly  opposed,  and  stirred  like  leaven 
through  a  great  part  of  the  literary  work  of  England. 
Later  on,  through  Coleridge,  Scott,  Carlyle,  and 
others,  the  influence  of  Goethe  and  Schiller,  of  the 
new  literature  of  Germany,  began  to  tell  upon  us,  in 
theology,  in  philosophy,  and  even  in  the  novel.  The 
great  English  Journals,  the  Morning  Chronicle,  the 
Times,  the  Morning  Post,  the  Morning  Herald,  were 
all  set  on  foot  between  1775  and  1793,  between 
the  war  with  America  and  the  war  with  France ;  and 
when  men  like  Coleridge  and  Canning  began  to  write 
in  them  the  literature  of  journalism  was  started.  A 
Literature  especially  directed  towards  Education  arose 
in  the  Cyclopcedias,  which  began  in  1778,  and 
rapidly  developed   into   vast    Dictionaries  of  know- 


154  ENGLISH  LITERATURE,  [chap. 

ledge.  Along  with  them  were  the  many  series 
issued  from  Edinburgh  and  London  of  Popular- 
Miscellanies,  A  crowd  of  hterary  men  found  employ- 
ment in  writing  about  books  rather  than  in  writing 
them,  and  the  Literature  of  Criticism  became  a 
power.  The  Edinburgh  Review  was  established  in 
1 802,  and  the  Quuf  lerly^'xis  political  opponent,  in  1808, 
and  these  were  soon  followed  by  Frase/s  and  Black- 
wooiCs  Magazifie.  Jeffrey,  Professor  Wilson,  Sydney 
Smith,  and  a  host  of  others  wrote  in  these  on  contem- 
porary events  and  books.  Interest  in  contemporary 
stimulated  interest  in  past  literature,  and  Cole- 
ridge, Charles  Lamb,  Thomas  Campbell,  Hazlitt, 
Southey,  and  Savage  Landor  carried  on  that  study  of 
the  Elizabethan  and  earlier  poets  to  which  Warton 
havi  given  so  much  impulse  in  the  eighteenth  century. 
Literary  quarrels  concerning  the  schools  of  poetry 
produced  boo-;s  like  Coleridge's  Biographia  Liter  aria  ^ 
and  Wordsw^orth's  Essays  on  his  own  art  are  in  admir- 
able prose.  De  Quincey,  one  of  the  Edinburgh  school, 
is,  owing  to  the  peculiar  and  involved  melody  of  his 
style,  one  of  our  first,  as  he  is  one  of  our  most  various 
miscellaneous  writers  :  and  with  him  for  masculine 
English,  for  various  learning  and  forcible  fancy,  and, 
not  least,  for  his  vigorous  lyrical  work  and  poems,  we 
may  rank  Walter  Savage  Landor,  who  deepened  an 
interest  in  English  and  classic  literature.  Charles 
Lamb's  fineness  of  perception  was  shown  in  his  criti- 
cisms on  the  old  dramatists,  but  his  most  original  work 
was  the  Essays  of  Elia,  in  which  he  renew^ed  the  lost 
grace  of  the  essay,  and  with  a  humour  not  less  gentle, 
but  more  subtle  than  Addison's. 

125.  Theological  Literature  had  received  a 
new  impulse  in  1738-91  from  the  evangelising  \vork 
of  John  Wesley  and  Whitfield ;  and  their  spiritual 
followers,  John  Scott,  Newton,  and  Cecil,  made  by  their 
writings  the  Evangelical  school.  William  Paley,  in 
his  Evidences,  defended  Christianity  from  the  common- 


VII.]    PROSE  LITERATURE  FROM  i'^%()  TO  \%i2.       155 

sense  point  of  view;  while  the  sermons  of  Robert 
Hall  and  of  Dr.  Chalmers  are,  in  ditferent  ways,  fine 
examples  of  devotional  and  philosophical  eloquence. 

126.  The  eloquent  intelligence  of  Edinburgh  con- 
tinued the  Literature  of  Philosophy  in  the  work 
of  Dugald  Stewart.  Reid's  successor,  and  in  that  of 
Dr.  Browne,  who  for  the  most  part  opposed  Hume's 
fundamental  idea  that  Psychology  is  a  part  of  the 
Science  of  Life.  Coleridge  brought  his  own  and  the 
German  philosophies  into  the  treatment  of  theological 
questions  in  the  Aids  to  Reflection,  and  into  various 
subjects  of  life  in  the  Friend,  The  utilitarian  view  of 
morals  was  put  forth  by  Jeremy  Bentham  with  great 
power,  but  his  chief  work  was  in  the  province  of  Law. 
He  founded  the  Philosophy  of  Jurisprudence,  he  in- 
vented a  scientific  legal  vocabulary,  and  we  owe  to 
him  almost  every  reform  that  has  improved  our  Law. 
He  wrote  also  on  political  economy,  but  that  subject 
was  more  fully  developed  by  Malthus,  Ricardo,  and 
James  Mill. 

127.  Biography  and  travel  are  linked  at  many 
points  to  history,  and  the  literature  of  the  former  was 
enriched  by  Hayley's  Cowper,  Southey's  Life  of  Nelson, 
McCrie's  Life  of  Knox,  Moore's  Life  of  Byron,  and 
Lockhart's  Life  of  Scott.  As  to  travel,  it  has  rarely 
produced  books  which  may  be  called  literature,  but 
the  works  of  biographers  and  travellers  have  brought 
together  the  materials  of  literature.  Bruce  left  for 
Africa  in  1762,  and  in  the  next  seventy  years  Africa, 
Egypt,  Italy,  Greece,  the  Holy  Land,  and  the  Arctic 
Regions  were  made  the  common  property  of  literary 
men. 

128.  The  Historical  School  produced  Mitford's 
History  of  Greece,  18 10,  and  Lingard's  Llistory  of  Eng- 
land, 18 19;  but  it  was  Henry  Hallam  who  for  the  first 
time  wrote  history  in  this  country  without  a  grain  of 
prejudice.  PI  is  Europe  during  the  Middle  Ages,  1818, 
is  distinguished  by  its  exhaustive  and  judicial  summing- 

14 


156  ENGLISH  LITERA  TURK.  [chap. 

up  of  facts,  and  his  Constitutional  History  of  Engla?id 
set  on  foot  a  new  kind  of  history  in  the  best  way. 
Since  his  time,  impelled  by  Macaulay,  Dean  Milman, 
and  others,  history  has  become  more  and  more  worthy 
of  the  name  of  fine  Hterature,  and  the  critical  schools 
of  our  own  day,  while  making  truth  the  first  thing,  and 
the  philosophy  of  history  the  second,  do  not  disdain 
but  exact  the  graces  of  literature.  But  of  all  the 
forms  of  prose  literature,  the  novel  was  the  most 
largely  used  and  developed. 

129.  The  Novel. — The  stir  of  thought  made  by 
the  French  Revolution  had  many  side  influences  on 
novel- writing.  The  political  stories  of  Thomas  Holcroft 
and  William  Godwin  opened  a  new  realm  to  the 
novelist.  The  Canterbury  Tales  of  Sophia  and 
Harriet  Lee,  and  the  wild  and  picturesque  tales  of 
Mrs.  Radcliffe  introduced  the  Romantic  Novel.  Mrs. 
Inchbald's  Sifnple  Stoty,  179^?  started  the  novel  of 
Passion,  while  Mrs.  Opie  made  domestic  life  the 
sphere  of  her  graceful  and  pathetic  stories,  1806. 
Miss  Edgeworth  in  her  Irish  stories  gave  the  first 
impulse  to  the  novel  of  national  character,  and  in 
her  other  tales  to  the  novel  with  a  moral  purpose, 
1801-11.  Miss  Austen,  "with  an  exquisite  touch 
which  renders  commonplace  things  and  characters 
interesting  from  truth  of  description  and  sentiment,'* 
produced  the  best  novels  we  have  of  everyday  society, 
i8[i-i7.  With  the  peace  of  1815  arose  new  forms  of 
fiction ;  and  travel,  now  popular,  gave  birth  to  the  tale 
of  foreign  society  and  manners ;  of  these,  Thomas 
Hope's  Anasiasius  (1819)  was  the  first.  The  Classical 
Novel  arose  in  Lockhart's  Valerius^  and  Miss  Ferrier*s 
humorous  tales  of  Scottish  life  were  pleasant  to  Walter 
Scott. 

It  was  Walter  Scott,  however,  who  raised  the 
whole  of  the  literature  of  the  novel  into  one  of  the 
great  influences  that  bear  on  human  life.  Men  arc 
Btill  alive  who  remember  the  wonder  and  delight  with 


vu.]    PROSE  LITERATURE  FROM  1789  TO  1832.      157 

which  Waverley  (1814)  was  welcomed.  The  swiftness 
of  work  combined  with  vast  diligence  which  belongs 
to  very  great  genius  belonged  to  him.  Guy  Manner- 
ing  was  written  in  six  weeks,  and  the  Bride  of  Lam- 
mermoor,  as  great  in  fateful  pathos  as  Romeo  and 
yuliet,  but  more  solemn,  was  done  in  a  fortnight. 
There  is  then  a  certain  abandon  in  his  work  which 
removes  it  from  the  dignity  of  the  ancient  writers,  but 
we  are  repaid  for  this  loss  by  tlie  intensity,  and  the 
animated  movement,  and  the  inspired  delight  with 
which  he  invented  and  wrote  his  stories.  It  is  not 
composition ;  it  is  Scott  actually  present  in  each  of 
his  personages,  and  speaking  their  thoughts.  His 
National  tales  —  and  his  own  country  was  his  best 
inspiration  —  are  written  with  such  love  for  the 
characters  and  the  scenes,  that  we  feel  his  joy 
and  love  underneath  each  of  the  stories  as  a  com- 
pleting charm,  as  a  spirit  that  enchants  the  whole. 
And  in  these  tales  his  own  deep  kindliness,  his  sym- 
pathy with  human  nature,  united,  after  years  of  enmity, 
the  Highlands  to  the  Lowlands.  In  the  vivid  por- 
traiture and  dramatic  reality  of  such  tales  as  Old 
Mortality  and  Quentin  Dufivard  he  created  the 
Historical  novel.  "  All  is  great,"  said  Goethe,  speak- 
ing of  one  of  these  historical  tales,  *'  in  the  Waverley 
Novels  ;  material,  effect,  characters,  execution."  In 
truth,  so  natural  is  Scott's  invention,  that  it  seems 
creation.  Everything  speaks  in  the  tale  and  to  the 
tale,  and  the  landscape  is  woven  through  the  events 
and  in  harmony  with  them.  His  comprehensive 
power,  which  drew  with  the  same  certainty  so 
many  characters  in  so  many  various  classes,  was  the 
direct  result  of  his  profound  sympathy  with  the  simpler 
feelings  of  the  human  heart,  and  of  his  pleasure  in 
writing  so  as  to  make  human  life  more  beautiful  and 
more  good  in  the  eyes  of  men.  He  was  always  ro- 
mantic, and  his  romance  did  not  fail  him  when  he 
came  to  be  old.      Like  Shakspere   he  kept  that  to 


158  ENGLISH  LITERATURE,  [chap. 

the  very  close.  The  later  years  of  his  life  were 
dark,  but  the  almost  unrivalled  nobleness  of  his 
battle  against  ill  fortune  prove  that  he  was  as  great 
hearted  as  he  was  great.  "  God  bless  thee,  Walter, 
my  man,"  said  his  uncle,  "  thou  hast  risen  to  be 
great,  but  thou  wast  always  good."  His  last  tale  of 
power  was  the  Fair  Maid  of  Perth  (1828),  and  his  last 
effort,  in  1831,  was  made  the  year  before  he  died. 
That  year,  1832,  which  saw  the  deaths  of  Goethe  and 
Scott,  is  the  close  of  an  epoch  in  literature. 


CHAPTER  VIII. 

POETRY,    FROM    1 7 30   TO    1 83 2. 

Ramsay's  Gentle  Shepherd^  1725- — Thomson's  Seasons,  1730. 
—Gray  and  Collins,  Poetn^,  1746-1757- —  Goldsmith's 
Traveller,  1764-  —  Chatterton's  Poems,  YJIQ.  —  Blake's 
Poems,  1777-1794.— Cribbe's  Village,  1783.— Cowper's 
Task,  1785.  — l^urns's  /rj/  Poems,  1786. —Campbell's 
Pleasures  of  Hope,  1799- — Wordsworth's  LxHcal  Ballads, 
1798  ,  his  Prelude,  1806  ;  Excurdon,  1814.-— Coleridge's 
Christabel,  1805. — Scott's  Lay  of  the  Last  Minstrel,  Mar- 
mion.  Lady  of  the  Lake,  1805-8-10. — Byron's  Poems,  1807- 
1823.— Shelley's  Poems,  1813-1821-- Keats'  Poems,  1817- 
1820.  Tennyson's /rj//l?(?wj,  1830- 

130.  The  Elements  and  Forms  of  the  New 
Poetry. — The  poetry  we  are  now  to  study  may  be 
divided  into  two  periods.  The  first  dates  from  about 
the  middle  of  Pope's  life,  and  closes  with  the  pub- 
lication of  Cowper's  Task^  17S5  ;  the  second  begins 
with  the  Task  and  closes  in  1832.  The  first  is  not 
wrongly  called  a  time  of  transition.  The  influence 
of  the  poetry  of  the  past  lasted  ;  new  elements  were 
added   to  poetry,  and  new  forms  of  it  took  shape. 


VIII.]  POETRY,  FROM  1730  TO  1832.  159 

There  was  a  change  also  in  the  style  and  in  the 
subject  of  poetry.  Under  these  heads  I  shall  bring 
together  the  various  poetical  works  of  this  period. 

(i.)  The  influence  of  the  didactic  and  satirical  poetry 
of  the  critical  school  lingered  among  the  new  elements 
which  I  shall  notice.  It  is  found  in  Johnson's  two 
satires  on  the  manners  of  his  time,  the  London^  ^I2i^i 
and  the  Vaiiity  of  Hu7nan  Wishes^  i749;  ii^  Robert 
Blair's  dull  poem  of  The  Grave,  1743;  in  Edward 
Young's  Night  Thoughts,  1743,  a  poem  on  the  immor- 
tality of  the  soul,  and  in  his  satires  on  The  Universal 
Passion  of  Fame;  in  the  tame  work  of  Richard 
Savage,  Johnson's  poor  friend  ;  and  in  the  short-lived 
but  vigorous  satires  of  Charles  Churchill,  who  died  in 
1764,  twenty  years  after  Savage.  The  Pleasures  of  the 
Imagination,  1744,  by  Mark  Akenside,  belongs  also  in 
spirit  to  the  time  of  Queen  Anne,  and  was  suggested 
by  Addison's  essays  in  the  Spectator  on  imagination. 

(  2 . )  The  study  of  the  Greek  and  Latin  classics  revived, 
and  with  it  a  more  artistic  poetry.  Not  only  correct 
form,  which  Pope  attained,  but  beautiful  form  also 
was  sought  after.  Men  like  Thomas  Gray  and 
William  Collins  strove  to  pour  into  their  work  that 
simplicity  of  beauty  which  the  Greek  poets  and 
Italians  like  Petrarca  had  reached  as  the  last  result  of 
genius  restrained  by  art.  Their  best  poems,  pub- 
lished between  1746  and  1757,  are  exquisite  examples 
of  English  work  wrought  in  the  spirit  of  the  imagina- 
tive scholar  and  the  moralist.  The  affectation  of  the 
age  touches  them  now  and  again,  but  their  manner, 
their  way  of  blending  together  natural  feeling  and 
natural  scenery,  their  studious  care  in  the  choice  of 
words  are  worthy  of  special  study. 

(3.)  The  study  of  the  Elizabethan  and  the  earlier  poets 
like  Chauce' ,  and  of  the  whole  course  of  poetry  in 
Enghind,  was  taken  up  wilh  great  interest.  Shakspere 
and  Chaucer  had  engaged  both  Dryden  and  Pope ; 
but  the  whole  subject  was  now  enlarged.     Gray  like 


f6o  ENGLISH  LITERATURE,  [chaP. 

Pope  projected  a  history  of  English  poetry,  and  his 
Ode  on  the  Progress  of  Poesy  illustrates  this  new 
interest.  Thomas  Warton  wrote  his  History  of  English 
Poetry^  1774-78,  and  in  doing  so  suggested  fresh  mate- 
rial to  the  poets.  They  began  to  take  delight  in  the 
childlikeness  and  naturalness  of  Chaucer  as  distin- 
guished from  the  artificial  and  critical  verse  of  the 
school  of  Pope.  Shakspere  was  studied  in  a  more 
accurate  way.  Pope's,  Theobald's,  Sir  Thomas  Han- 
mer's,  and  Warburton's  editions  of  Shakspere  were 
succeeded  by  Johnson's  in  1765  ;  and  Garrick  the 
actor  began  the  restoration  of  the  genuine  text  of 
Shakspere 's  plays  for  the  stage. 

Spenser  formed  the  spirit  and  work  of  some  poets, 
and  T.  Warton  wrote  an  essay  on  the  Faerie  Queen, 
William  Shenstone's  Schoolmistress,  1742,  was  one  of 
these  Spenserian  poems,  and  so  was  the  Castle  of 
Indolence,  1748,  by  James  Thomson,  author  of  the 
Seasons,  James  Beattie,  in  the  Minstrel,  1771,  also 
followed  the  stanza  and  manner  of  Spenser. 

(4.)  A  new  element — interest  in  the  romantic  past — 
was  added  by  the  publication  of  Dr.  Percy's  P cliques 
of  Ancient  English  Poet?y,  1765.  The  narrative  ballad 
and  the  narrative  romance,  afterwards  taken  up  and 
perfected  by  Sir  Walter  Scott,  now  struck  their  roots 
afresh  in  English  poetry.  Men  began  to  seek  among 
the  ruder  times  of  history  for  wild,  natural  stories  of 
human  life  ;  and  the  pleasure  in  these  increased  and 
accompanied  the  growing  love  of  lonely,  even  of 
savage  scenery.  The  Ossian,  1762,  of  James  Mac- 
pherson,  which  asserted  itself  as  a  translation  of  Gaelic 
epic  poems,  is  an  example  of  this  new  element.  Still 
more  remarkable  in  this  way  were  the  poems  of 
Thomas  Chatterton,  the  "marvellous  boy,"  who 
died  by  his  own  hand,  in  1770,  at  the  age  of  seven- 
teen. He  pretended  to  have  discovered,  in  a  muni- 
ment room  at  Bristol,  the  Death  of  Sir  Charles 
Bawdin,   and  other  poems,   by  an  imaginary  monk 


VIII.]  POETRY,  FROM  1730  TO  1832.  161 

named  Thomas  Rowley.  Written  with  quaint  spelling, 
and  with  a  great  deal  of  lyrical  invention,  they  raised 
around  them  a  great  controversy.  As  an  instance  of 
the  same  tendency,  even  before  the  jReligues,  we  men- 
tion Gray's  translations  from  the  Norse  and  British 
poetry,  and  his  poem  of  the  Bard,  in  which  the  bards 
of  Wales  are  celebrated. 

131.  Change  of  Style.— We  have  seen  how  the 
natural  style  of  the  Elizabethan  poets  had  ended  by 
producing  an  unnatural  style.  In  reaction  from  this 
the  criticalpoets  set  aside  natural  feeling,  and  wrote 
according  to  frigid  rules  of  art.  Their  style  lost  life 
and  fire  ;  and  losing  these,  lost  art,  which  has  its  roots 
in  emotion,  and  gained  artifice,  which  has  its  roots 
in  intellectual  analysis.  Unwarmed  by  any  natural 
feeling,  it  became  as  unnatural  a  style,  though  in  a 
different  way,  as  that  of  the  later  Elizabethan  poets. 
We  may  sum  up  then  the  whole  history  of  the  style 
of  poetry  from  Elizabeth  to  George  I. — the  style 
of  Milton  being  excepted — in  these  words :  Nature 
without  Art,  and  Art  without  Nature,  had  reached 
similar  but  not  identical  results  in  style.  But  in 
the  process  two  things  had  been  learned.  First, 
that  artistic  rules  were  necessary — and  secondly,  that 
natural  feeling  was  necessary,  in  order  that  poetry 
should  have  a  style  fitted  to  express  nobly  the  emo- 
tions and  thoughts  of  man.  The  way  was  therefore 
now  made  ready  for  a  style  in  which  the  Art  should 
itself  be  Nature,  and  it  found  its  first  absolute  expres- 
sion in  a  few  of  Cowper's  lyrics.  His  style.,  in  such 
poems  as  the  Lines  to  his  Mother  s  Picture,  and  the 
Loss  of  the  Royal  George,  arises  out  of  the  simplest 
pathos,  and  yet  is  almost  as  pure  in  expression  as 
Greek  poetry.  The  work  was  then  done  ;  but  the 
element  of  fervent  passion  did  not  enter  into  poetry 
until  1789. 

132.  Change  of  Subject.  —  Nature.  —  The 
Poets  have  always  worked  on  two  great  subjects — 


i62  ENGLISH  LITERATURE.  [chap. 

Man  and  Nature.  Up  to  the  age  of  Pope  the 
subject  of  Man  was  alone  treated,  and  we  have  seen 
how  many  phases  it  went  through.  There  remained 
the  subject  of  Nature  and  of  man's  relation  to  it ; 
that  is,  of  the  visible  landscape,  sea,  and  sky,  ancl 
all  that  men  feel  in  contact  with  them.  Natural 
^scenery  had  been  hitherto  only  used  as  a  background 
to  the  picture  of  human  life.  It  now  began  to  occupy 
a  much  larger  space  in  poetry,  and  after  a  time  grew 
to  occupy  a  distinct  place  of  its  own  apart  from  Man. 
It  is  the  growth  of  this  new  subject  which  will  engage 
us  now. 

133.  The  Poetry  of  Natural  Description. — 
We  have  already  found  traces  in  the  poets,  but  chiefly 
among  the  Puritans,  of  a  pleasure  in  rural  things  and 
the  emotions  they  awakened.  But  Nature  is  only,  as 
in  the  work  of  Marvell  and  Milton,  incidentally  intro- 
duced. The  first  poem  devoted  to  natural  description 
appeared,  while  Pope  was  yet  alive,  in  the  very  midst 
of  the  town  poetry.  It  was  the  Seasons  1726-30  ;  and 
it  is  curious,  remembering  what  I  have  said  about  the 
peculiar  turn  of  the  Scotch  for  natural  description, 
that  it  was  the  work  of  James  Thomson,  a  Scotch- 
man. It  described  the  scenery  and  country  life  of 
Spring,  Summer,  Autumn,  and  Winter.  He  wrote 
with  his  eye  upon  their  scenery,  and  even  when  he 
wrote  of  it  in  his  room,  it  was  with  *'  a  recollected 
love."  The  descriptions  were  too  much  like  cata- 
logues, the  very  fault  of  the  previous  Scotch  poets, 
a'^d  his  style  was  always  heavy  and  often  cold,  but  he 
was  the  first  poet  who  led  the  English  people  into  that 
new  world  of  nature  which  has  enchanted  us  in  the 
work  of  modern  poetry,  but  which  was  entirely  impos- 
sible for  Pope  to  understand.  The  impulse  he  gave 
was  soon  followed.  Men  left  the  town  to  visit  the 
country  and  record  their  feelings.  William  Somer- 
ville's  Chase,  1735,  and  J^^^  Dyer's  Grongar  Hill, 
1726,  a  description  of  a  journey  in  South  Wales,  and 


VIII.]  POETRY,  FROM  1730  TO  1832.  163 

his  Fleece^  i757,  are  full  of  country  sights  and  scenes  : 
and  even  Akenside  mingled  his  spurious  philosophy 
with  pictures  of  solitary  natural  scenery. 

Foreign  travel  now  enlarged  the  love  of  nature. 
Gray's  letters,  some  of  the  best  in  the  English  lan- 
guage, describe  natural  scenery  with  a  minuteness 
quite  new  in  English  Literature.  In  his  poetry  he 
used  the  description  of  nature  as  *'  its  most  graceful 
ornament,"  but  never  made  it  the  subject.  In  the 
Eltgy  in  a  Country  Churchyard,  and  in  the  Ode  on  a 
Dutafit  jP/  ospect  of  Eton  College,  natural  scenery  is 
interwoven  with  reflections  on  human  life,  and  used 
to  point  its  moral.  CoHins  observes  the  same  method 
in  his  Ode  on  the  Passions  and  the  Ode  to  Evening, 
There  is  as  yet  but  little  love  of  nature  for  its  own 
sake.  A  further  step  was  made  by  Oliver  Gold- 
smith in  his  Traveller,  1764,  a  sketch  of  national 
manners  and  governments,  and  in  his  Deserted  Vil- 
lage, 1770.  fie  describes  natural  scenery  with  less 
emotion  than  Collins,  and  does  not  moralise  it  like 
Gray.  The  scenes  he  paints  are  pure  pictures,  and 
he  has  no  personal  interest  in  them.  The  next  step 
was  made  by  men  like  the  two  Wartons  and  by  John 
Logan,  1782.  Their  poems  do  not  speak  of  nature 
and  human  life,  but  of  nature  and  themselves.  They 
see  the  reflection  of  their  own  joys  and  sorrows  in  the 
woods  and  streams,  and  for  the  first  time  the  pleasure 
of  being  alone  with  nature  apart  from  men  became  a 
distinct  element  in  modern  poetry.  In  the  latter 
poets  it  becomes  one  of  their  main  subjects.  These 
were  the  steps  towards  that  love  of  nature  for  its  own^ 
sake  which  we  shall  find  in  the  poets  who  followed 
Cowper.  One  poem  of  the  time  almost  anticipates  it. 
It  is  the  Minstrel,  1771,  of  James  Beattie.  This 
poem  represents  a  young  poet  educated  almost  alto- 
gether by  lonely  communion  with  and  love  of  nature, 
and  both  in  the  spirit  and  treatment  of  the  first  part  of 
.the  story  resembles  very  closely  Wordsworth's  descrip- 


I64  ENGLISH  LITERATURE.  [chap. 

tion  of  his  own  education  by  nature  in  the  beginning 
of  the  Prelude,  and  the  history  of  the  pedler  in  the 
first  book  of  the  Excursion. 

134.  Further  Change  of  Subject. — Man. — 
During  this  time  the  interest  in  Mankind,  that  is,  in 
Man  independent  of  nation,  class,  and  caste,  which  we 
have  seen  in  prose,  began  to  influence  poetry.  One 
form  of  it  appeared  in  the  interest  the  poets  began  to 
take  in  men  of  other  nations  than  England  ;  another 
form  of  it — and  this  was  increased  by  the  Methodist 
revival — was  the  interest  in  the  lives  of  the  poor. 
Thomson  speaks  with  sympathy  of  the  Siberian  exile 
and  the  Mecca  pilgrim,  and  the  Traveller  of  Gold- 
smith  enters    into    foreign    interests.      His   Deserted 

Village,  Shenstone's  Schoolmistress,  Gray's  Elegy  cele- 
brate the  annals  of  the  poor.  Michael  Bruce  in  his 
Lochleven  praises  the  "  secret  primrose  path  of  rural 
life,"  and  Dr.  John  Langhorne  in  his  Country  Justice 
pleads  the  cause  of  the  poor  and  paints  their  sorrows. 
Connected  with  this  new  element  is  the  simple  ballad 
of  simple  love,  such  as  Shenstone's  yemmy  Dawson, 
Mickle's  Mariner'* s  Wife,  Goldsmith's  Edwin  and 
Angelina,  poems  which  started  a  new  type  of  human 
poetry,  afterwards  worked  out  more  completely  in  the 
Lyrical  Ballads  of  Wordsworth.  In  a  class  apart  I 
call  attention  to  the  Song  of  David,  a  long  poem 
written  by  Christopher  Smart,  a  friend  of  Johnson's. 
It  will  be  found  in  Chambers'  **  Cyclopaedia  of  Eng- 
lish  Literature."  Composed  for  the  most  part  in  a 
madhouse,  the  song  has  a  touch  here  and  there  of  the 
overforcefulness  and  the  lapsing  thoughts  of  a  half 
insane  brain.  But  its  power  of  metre  and  imagina- 
tive presentation  of  thoughts  and  things,  and  its 
mingling  of  sweet  and  grand  religious  poetry  ought  to 
make  it  better  known.  It  is  unique  in  style  and  in 
character. 

135.  Scottish  Poetry  illustrates  and  anticipates 
the  poetry  of  the  poor  and  the  ballad.     We  have  not 


VIII. J  POETRY,  FROM  1730  TO  1832.  165 

mentioned  it  since  Sir  David  Lyndsay,  for  with  the 
exception  of  stray  songs  its  voice  was  silent  for  a 
century  and  a  half.  It  revived  in  Allan  Ramsay,  a 
friend  of  Pope  and  Gay.  His  light  pieces  of  rustic 
humour  were  followed  by  the  Tea  Table  Miscellany 
and  the  jS'z/^r- (7/r<f«,  collections  of  existing  Scottish 
songs  mixed  up  with  some  of  his  own.  Ramsay's 
pastoral  drama  of  the  Gentle  Shepherd ^  1725,  is  a 
pure,  tender,  and  genuine  picture  of  Scottish  life  and 
love  among  the  poor  and  in  the  country.  Robert 
Ferguson  deserves  to  be  named  because  he  kindled 
the  muse  of  Burns,  and  his  occasional  pieces,  1773, 
are  chiefly  concerned  with  the  rude  and  humorous 
life  of  Edinburgh.  The  Ballad,  always  continuous  in 
Scotland,  took  a  more  modern  but  very  pathetic  form 
in  such  productions  as  Auld  Robin  Gray  and  the 
Flowers  of  the  Forest^  a  mourning  for  those  who  fell  at 
Flodden  Field.  The  peculiarities  I  have  dwelt  on 
already  continue  in  this  revival.  There  is  the  same 
nationality,  the  same  rough  wit,  the  same  love  of 
nature,  but  the  love  of  colour  has  lessened.  With 
Robert  Burns  poetry  written  in  the  Scotch  dialect 
may  be  said  to  say  its  last  word  of  genius,  though  it 
lingered  on  in  James  Hogg's  pretty  poem  of  Kilmeny 
in  The  Queen's  Wake,  18 13,  and  continues  a  song- 
making  existence  to  the  present  day. 

136.  The  Second  Period  of  the  New  Poetry, 
— The  new  elements  and  the  changes  on  which  I  have 
dwelt  are  expressed  by  three  poets — Cowper,  Crabbe, 
and  Burns.  But  before  these  we  must  mention  the 
poems  of  William  Blake,  the  artist,  and  for  three 
reasons,  (i.)  They  represent  the  new  elements.  The 
Poetical  Sketches,  written  in  1777,  illustrate  the  new 
study  of  the  Elizabethan  poets.  Blake  imitated 
Spenser,  and  in  his  short  fragment  of  Fdward  III,  we 
hear  again  the  note  of  Marlowe's  violent  imagination. 
A  short  poem  To  the  Muses  is  a  cry  for  the  restoration 
to  English  poetry  of  the  old  poetic  passion  it  had  lost. 


I66  ENGLISH  LITERATURE.  [chap. 

In  some  ballad  poems  we  trace  the  influence  repre- 
sented by  Ossiafi  and  given  by  the  publication  of 
Percy's  Reliqiies,  (2.)  We  find  also  in  his  work  cer- 
tain elements  which  belonged  to  the  second  period  of 
which  I  shall  soon  speak.  The  love  of  animals  is 
one.  A  great  love  of  children  and  the  poetry  of 
home  is  another.  He  also  anticipated  in  1789  and 
1794,  when  his  Songs  of  Iiinocejice  and  Experie7ice  were 
written,  the  simple  natural  poetry  of  ordinary  life 
which  Wordsworth  perfected  in  the  Lyrical  Ballads, 
1798.  Further  still,  we  find  in  these  poems  traces  of 
the  democratic  element,  of  the  hatred  of  priestcraft, 
and  of  the  war  with  social  wrongs  which  came  much 
later  into  English  poetry.  We  even  find  traces  of  the 
mysticism  and  the  search  after  the  problem  of  life  that 
fill  so  much  of  our  poetry  after  1832.  (3.)  But  that 
which  is  most  special  in  Blake  is  his  extraordinary 
reproduction  of  the  spirit,  tone,  and  ring  of  the  Eliza- 
bethan songs,  of  the  inimitable  innocence  and  fear- 
lessness which  belongs  to  the  childhood  of  a  new 
literature.  The  little  poems  too  in  the  Songs  of  Inno- 
cence, on  infancy  and  first  motherhood,  and  on  subjects 
like  the  Lamb,  are  without  rival  in  our  language  for 
simplicity  and  songful  joy.  The  Son^s  of  Experience 
give  the  reverse  side  of  the  Songs  of  Innocence,  and 
they  see  the  evil  of  the  world  as  a  child  with  a  man's 
heart  would  see  it — with  exaggerated  and  ghastly 
horror.  Blake  stands  alone  in  our  poetry,  and  his 
work  coming  where  it  did,  between  1777  and  1794, 
makes  it  the  more  remarkable. 

137.  William  Co^vper's  first  poems  were  the 
Olney  Hymns,  1779,  written  along  with  John  Newton, 
and  in  these  the  religious  poetry  of  Charles  Wesley 
was  continued.  The  profound  personal  religion, 
gloomy  even  to  insanity  as  it  often  became,  which 
fills  the  whole  of  Cowper's  poetry,  introduced  a  theo- 
logical element  into  English  poetry  which  continually 
increased  till  within  the  last  ten  years,  when  it  has 


VIII.]  POETRY,  FROM  1730  TO  1832.  167 

gradually  ceased.  His  didactic  and  satirical  poems 
in  1782  link  him  backwards  to  the  last  age.  His 
translation  of  Homer,  1791,  and  of  shorter  pieces 
from  the  Latin  and  Greek,  connects  him  with  the 
classical  influence,  his  interest  in  Milton  with  the 
revived  study  of  the  English  Poets.  The  playful 
and  gentle  vein  of  humour  which  he  showed  in  yohn 
Gilpin  and  other  poems,  opened  a  new  kind  of  verse 
to  poets.  With  this  kind  of  humour  is  connected  a 
simple  pathos  of  which  Cowper  is  our  greatest  master. 
The  Lifies  to  Ma^y  Unwin  and  to  his  Mothers  Picture 
prove,  with  the  work  of  Elake,  that  pure  natural  feel- 
ing wholly  free  from  artifice  had  returned  to  English 
song.  A  new  element  was  also  introduced  by  him 
and  Blake — the  love  of  animals  and  the  poetry  of 
their  relation  to  man,  a  vein  plentifully  worked  by 
after  poets.  His  greatest  work  was  the  Task,  1785. 
It  is  mainly  a  description  of  himself  and  his  life  in 
the  country,  his  home,  his  friends,  his  thoughts  as  he 
walked,  the  quiet  landscape  of  Olney,  the  life  of  the 
poor  people  about  him,  mixed  up  with  disquisitions 
on  political  and  social  subjects,  and  at  the  end,  a 
prophecy  of  the  victory  of  the  Kingdom  of  God.  The 
chafige  ill  it  in  relation  to  the  subject  of  Nature  is  very 
great,  Cowper  is  the  first  of  the  poets  who  loves 
Nature  entirely  for  her  own  sake.  He  paints  only 
what  he  sees,  but  he  paints  it  with  the  affection  of  a 
child  for  a  flower  and  with  the  minute  observation  of 
a  man.  The  change  in  relation  to  the  subject  of  Man  is 
equally  great.  The  idea  of  Mankind  as  a  whole  which 
we  have  seen  growing  up  is  fully  formed  in  Cowper's 
mind.  The  range  of  his  interests  is  as  wide  as  the 
world,  and  all  men  form  one  brotherhood.  All  the 
social  questions  of  Education,  Prisons,  Hospitals,  city 
and  country  life,  the  state  of  the  poor  and  their  sor- 
rows, the  question  of  universal  freedom  and  of  slavery, 
of  human  wrong  and  oppression,  of  just  and  free 
government,  of  international  intercourse  and  union, 

16 


l68  ENGLISH  LITERATURE,  [chap. 

and  above  all  the  entirely  new  question  of  the  future 
destiny  of  the  race  as  a  whole,  are  introduced 
by  Cowper  into  English  poetry.  It  is  a  wonderful 
change ;  a  change  so  wonderful  that  it  is  like  a  new 
world.  And  though  splendour  and  passion  were 
added  by  the  poets  who  succeeded  him  to  the  new 
poetry,  yet  they  worked  on  the  thoughts  he  had  begun 
to  express,  and  he  is  their  forerunner. 

138.  George  Crabbe  took  up  the  side  of  the 
poetry  of  Man  which  had  to  do  with  the  lives  of  the 
poor  in  the  Village^  17S3,  and  in  the  Parish  Register^ 
1807.  In  the  short  tales  related  in  these  books  we 
are  brought  face  to  face  with  the  sternest  pictures  of 
humble  life,  its  sacrifices,  temptations,  righteousness, 
love,  and  crimes.  The  prison,  the  workhouse,  rhe 
hospital,  and  the  miserable  cottage  are  all  sketched 
with  a  truthfulness  perhaps  too  unrelenting,  and  the 
effect  of  this  poetry  in  widening  human  sympathies 
was  very  great.  The  Borough  and  Tales  in  Verse 
followed,  and  finally  the  Tales  of  the  Hall  in  1819. 
His  work  wanted  the  humour  of  Cowper,  and  though 
often  pathetic  and  always  forcible,  was  too  forcible  for 
pure  pathos.  His  work  on  Nature  is  as  minute  and 
accurate,  but  as  limited  in  range  of  excellence,  as  his 
work  on  Man.  Robert  Bloomfield,  himself  a  poor 
shoemaker,  added  to  this  poetry  of  the  poor.  The 
Farmer's  Boy ^  1798,  and  the  Rural  Tales,  are  poems 
as  cheerful  as  Crabbe's  were  stem,  and  his  descriptions 
of  rural  life  are  not  less  faithful.  The  kind  of  poetry 
thus  started  long  continued  in  our  verse.  Wordsworth 
took  it  up  and  added  to  it  new  features,  and  Thomas 
Hood  in  short  pieces  like  the  So7ig  of  the  Shirt  gave  it 
a  direct  bearing  on  social  evils. 

139.  One  element,  the  passionate  treatment  of  love, 
had  been  on  the  whole  absent  from  our  poetry  since 
the  Restoration.  It  was  restored  by  Robert  Burns. 
In  his  love  songs  we  hear  again,  only  more  simply, 
more  directly,  the  same  natural  music  which  in  the  age 


VIII.]  POETRY,  FROM  1730  TO  1832.  169 

of  Elizabeth  enchanted  the  world.  It  was  as  a  love- 
poet  that  he  began  to  write,  and  the  first  edition  of  his 
poems  appeared  in  1786.  But  he  was  not  only  the 
poet  of  love,  but  also  of  the  new  excitement  about 
Man.  Himself  poor,  he  sang  the  poor.  Neither 
poverty  nor  low  birth  made  a  man  the  worse — the 
man  was  *'a  man  for  a'  that."  He  did  the  same  work 
in  Scotland  in  1786  which  Crabbe  began  in  England 
in  1783  and  Cowper  in  1785,  and  it  is  worth  remark- 
ing how  the  dates  run  together.  As  in  Cowper,  so 
also  in  Burns,  the  further  widening  of  human 
sympathies  is  shown  in  the  new  tenderness  for  animals. 
The  birds,  sheep,  cattle,  and  wild  creatures  of  the 
wood  and  field  fill  as  large  a  space  in  the  poetry  of 
Burns  as  in  that  of  Wordsworth  and  Coleridge.  He 
carried  on  also  the  Celtic  elements  of  Scotch  poetry, 
but  he  mingled  them  with  others  specially  English. 
The  ratding  fun  of  the  Jolly  Beggars  and  of  Tarn 
0^ Shanter  is  united  to  a  lifelike  painting  of  human 
character  which  is  peculiarly  English.  A  large  gentle- 
ness of  feehng  often  made  his  wit  into  that  true 
humour  which  is  more  English  than  Celtic,  and  the 
passionate  pathos  of  such  poems  as  Mary  in  Heaven 
is  connected  with  this  vein  of  English  humour.  The 
special  nationahty  of  Scotch  poetry  is  as  strong  in 
Burns  as  in  any  of  his  predecessors,  but  it  is  also 
mingled  with  a  larger  view  of  man  than  the  merely 
national  one.  Nor  did  he  fail  to  carry  on  the  Scotch 
love  of  nature,  though  he  shows  the  English  influence 
in  using  natural  description  not  for  the  love  of  nature 
alone,  but  as  a  background  for  human  love.  It  was 
the  strength  of  his  passions  and  the  weakness  of 
his  moral  will  which  made  his  poetry  and  spoilt  his, 
life. 

140.  The  French  Revolution  and  the  Poets. 
— Certain  ideas  relating  to  Mankind  considered  as  a 
whole  had  been  growing  up  in  Europe  for  more  than 
a  century,  and  we  have  seen  their  influence  on  the  work 


170  ENGLISH  LITERA  TORE.  [chap. 

of  Cowper,  Crabbe,  and  Burns.  These  ideas  spoke  of 
natural  rights  that  belonged  to  every  man,  and  which 
united  all  men  to  one  another.  All  men  were  by  right 
equal,  and  free,  and  brothers.  There  was  therefore 
only  one  class,  the  class  of  Man  ;  only  one  nation, 
the  nation  of  Man,  of  which  all  were  equal  citizens. 
All  the  old  divisions  therefore  which  wealth  and  rank 
and  class  and  caste  and  national  boundaiies  had  made, 
were  put  aside  as  wrong  and  useless.  Such  ideas  had 
been  for  a  long  time  expressed  by  France  in  her  liter- 
ature. They  were  now  waiting  to  be  expressed  in 
action,  and  in  the  overthrow  of  the  Bastille  in  1789, 
and  in  the  proclamation  of  the  new  Constitution  in 
the  following  year,  France  threw  them  abruptly  into 
popular  and  political  form.  Immediately  they  became 
living  powers  in  the  world,  and  it  is  round  the  excite- 
ment they  kindled  in  England  that  the  work  of  the 
poets  from  1790  to  1830  can  best  be  grouped.  Words- 
worth, Coleridge,  and  Southey  accepted  them  with 
joy,  but  receded  from  them  when  they  ended  in  the 
violence  of  the  Reign  of  Terror,  and  in  the  imperial- 
ism of  Napoleon.  Scott  turned  from  them  with  pain 
to  write  of  the  romantic  past.  Byron  did  not  express 
them  themselves,  but  he  expressed  the  whole  of 
the  revolutionary  spirit  in  its  action  against  old 
social  opinions.  Shelley  took  them  up  after  the 
reaction  against  them  had  begun  to  die  away  and 
re-expressed  them.  Two  men,  Rogers  and  Keats, 
were  wholly  untouched  by  them.  One  special  thing 
they  did  for  poetry.  They  brought  back,  by  the 
powerful  feelings  they  kindled  in  men,  passion  into  its 
style,  into  all  its  work  about  Man,  and  through  that, 
into  its  work  about  Nature. 

141.  Robert  Southey  began  his  poetical  life  with 
the  revolutionary  poem  of  IVaf  lyler.  1794;  ^^^ 
between  1802  and  18 14  wrote  Thalaba,,  Madoc,  The 
Curse  of  Kehama,  and  Roderick  the  Last  of  the  Goths. 
Thalaba  and  Kehatna  are  stories  of  Arabian  and  of 


VIII.]  FOETRY,  FROM  1730  TO  1832.  171 

Indian  mythology.  Full  of  Southey's  miscellaneous 
learning,  they  are  real  poems,  and  have  the  interest  of 
good  narrative  and  the  charm  of  musical  metre,  but 
the  finer  spirit  of  poetry  is  not  in  them.  Roderick  is 
the  most  human  and  therefore  the  most  poetical.  His 
Vision  of  Judgment,  written  on  the  death  of  George  III., 
iand  ridiculed  by  Byron  in  another  Vision^  proves  him 
to  have  become  a  Tory  of  Tories.  Samuel  T.  Cole- 
ridge could  not  turn  round  so  completely,  but  the 
wild  enthusiasm  of  his  early  poems  was  lessened  when 
in  1796  he  wrote  the  Ode  to  the  Departing  Year  and 
the  Ode  to  France.  When  France,  however,  ceasing 
to  be  the  champion  of  freedom,  attacked  Switzerland, 
Coleridge  as  well  as  Wordsworth  ceased  to  believe  in 
her,  and  fell  back  on  the  old  English  ideas  of  patriotism 
and  of  tranquil  freedom.  Still  the  disappointment 
was  bitter,  and  the  Ode  to  Dejection  is  instinct  not 
only  with  his  own  wasted  life,  but  with  the  sorrow  of 
one  who  has  had  golden  ideals  and  found  them  turn  in 
his  hands  to  clay.  His  best  work  is  but  little,  but  of 
its  kind  it  is  perfect  and  unique.  For  exquisite  me- 
trical movement  and  for  imaginative  phantasy,  there 
is  nothing  in  our  language  to  be  compared  with 
Christabel,  1805,  and  Kubla  Khan  and  the  A^icient 
Mariner,  published  as  one  of  the  Lyrical  Ballads  in 
1798.  The  httle  poem  called  Love  is  not  so  good, 
but  it  touches  with  great  grace  that  with  which  all 
sympathise.  All  that  he  did  excellently  might  be 
bound  up  in  twenty  pages,  but  it  should  be  bound  in 
pure  gold. 

142.  Of  all  the  poets  misnamed  Lake  Poets, 
William  Wordsworth  was  the  greatest.  Born  in 
1770,  educated  on  the  banks  of  Esthwaite,  he  loved 
the  scenery  of  the  Lakes  as  a  boy,  lived  among  it  in 
his  manhood,  and  died  in  1850  at  Rydal  Mount, 
close  to  R>dal  Lake.  He  took  his  degree  in  1791  at 
Cambridge.  The  year  before  he  had  made  a  short 
•  tour  on  the  Continent  and  stepped  on  the  French 


1 72  ENGLISH  LITER  A  TURE.  [chap. 

shore  at  the  very  time  when  the  whole  land  was  "  mad 
with  joy."  The  end  of  179 1  saw  him  again  in  France 
and  living  at  Orleans.  He  threw  himself  eagerly  into 
the  Revolution,  joined  the  "patriot  side,"  and  came 
to  Paris  just  after  the  September  massacre  of  1792. 
Narrowly  escaping  the  fate  of  his  friends  the  Brisso- 
tins,  he  got  home  to  England  before  the  execution  of 
Louis  XVI.  in  1793,  and  published  his  Descriptive 
Sketches.  His  sympathy  with  the  French  continued, 
and  he  took  their  side  against  his  own  country.  He 
was  poor,  but  his  friend  Raisley  Calvert  left  him  900/. 
and  enabled  him  to  live  the  simple  life  he  had  now 
chosen,  the  life  of  a  retired  poet.  At  first  we  find 
him  at  Racedown,  where  in  1797  he  made  friendship 
with  Coleridge,  and  then  at  Alfoxden,  in  Somerset, 
where  he  and  Coleridge  planned  and  published  in 
1798  the  Lyrical  Ballads.  After  a  winter  in  Germany 
with  Coleridge,  where  the  Prelude  was  begun,  he  took  a 
small  cottage  at  Grasmere,  and  there  in  1805-6  finished 
the  Prelude^  not  published  till  1850.  Another  set  of 
the  Lyrical  Ballads  appeared  in  1802,  and  in  1814 
his  philosophical  poem  the  Excursion.  From  that 
time  till  his  death  he  produced  from  his  home  at 
Rydal  Mount  a  long  succession  of  poems. 

143.  Wordsworth  and  Nature — T\\q  Prelude 
is  the  history  of  Wordsworth's  poetical  growth  from  a 
child  till  1806.  It  reveals  him  as  the  poet  of  Nature 
and  of  Man.  His  view  of  Nature  was  entirely  different 
from  that  which  up  to  his  time  the  poets  had  held. 
Wordsworth  said  that  Nature  was  alive.  It  had,  he 
thought,  one  living  soul  which,  entering  into  flower, 
stream,  or  mountain,  gave  them  each  their  own  life, 
Between  this  Spirit  in  Nature  and  the  Mind  of  Man 
there  was  a  pre-arranged  harmony  which  enabled 
Nature  to  communicate  its  own  thoughts  to  Man,  and 
Man  to  reflect  upon  them,  until  an  absolute  union 
between  them  was  established.  This  idea  made  him 
the  first  who  loved  Nature  with  a  personal  love,  for 


VIII.]  POETRY,  FROM  1730  TO  1832.  173 

she,  being  living,  and  personal,  and  not  only  his  re- 
flection, was  made  capable  of  being  loved  as  a  man 
loves  a  woman.  He  could  brood  on  her  character, 
her  ways,  her  words,  her  life,  as  he  did  on  those  of  his 
wife  or  sister.  Hence  arose  his  minute  and  loving 
observation  of  her  and  his  passionate  description  of  all 
her  life.  This  was  his  natural  philosophy,  and  bound 
up  as  it  was  with  the  idea  of  God  as  the  Thought 
which  pervaded  and  made  the  world,  it  rose  into  a 
Philosophy  of  God  and  Nature  and  Man.  But  he 
had  a  kind  of  moral  philosophy  distinct  from  this, 
which  was  no  deeper  than  a  lofty  and  grave  morality 
created  in  union  with  a  formal  Christianity.  It  has  no 
point  of  union  with  his  philosophy  of  Nature  and 
God  and  Man,  and  is  incapable  of  imaginative  treat- 
ment. Naturally  then,  when  it  enters  his  poetry,  it  is 
dragged  in,  and  is  always  prosaic.  He  is  not  the 
poet  then ;  he  is  the  formalist, 

144.  Wordsworth  and  Man. — The  poet  of 
Nature  in  this  special  way,  Wordsworth  is  even 
more  the  Poet  of  Man.  It  is  by  his  close  and 
loving  penetration  into  the  realities  and  simplicities 
of  human  life  that  he  himself  makes  his  claim  on 
our  reverence  as  a  poet.  We  have  seen  the  vivid 
interest  that  Wordsworth  took  in  the  new  ideas  about 
man  as  they  were  shown  in  the  French  Revolu- 
tion. But  even  before  that  he  relates  in  the  Fi'elude 
how  he  had  been  led  through  his  love  of  Nature  to 
honour  Man.  The  shepherds  of  the  Lake  hills,  the 
dalesmen,  had  been  seen  by  him  as  part  of  the  wild 
scenery  in  which  he  lived,  and  he  mixed  up  their  life 
with  the  grandeur  of  Nature  and  came  to  honour  them 
as  part  of  her  being.  The  love  of  Nature  led  him 
to  the  love  of  Man.  It  was  exacdy  the  reverse  order 
to  that  of  the  previous  poets.  At  Cambridge,  and 
afterwards  in  the  crowd  of  London  and  in  his  first 
tour  on  the  Continent,  he  received  new  impressions 
of  the  vast  world  of  Man,  but  Nature  still  remained 


174  ENGLISH  LITERATURE,  [chap. 

the  first.  It  was  only  during  his  life  in  France  and 
in  the  excitement  of  the  new  theories  and  their  activity 
that  he  was  swept  away  from  Nature  and  found  him- 
<;elf  thinking  of  Man  as  distinct  from  her  and  first  in 
importance.  But  the  hopes  he  had  formed  from  the 
Revolution  broke  down.  AH  his  dreams  about  a  new  life 
of  man  were  made  vile  when  France  gave  up  liberty 
for  Napoleon ;  and  he  was  left  without  love  of  Nature 
or  care  for  Man.  It  was  then  that  his  sister  Dorothy, 
hei self  worthy  of  mention  in  a  history  of  literature,  led 
him  back  to  his  early  love  of  Nature  and  restored 
his  mind.  Living  quietly  at  Grasmere,  he  sought 
in  the  simple  lives  of  the  dalesmen  round  him  for  the 
foundations  of  a  truer  view  of  mankind  than  the 
theories  of  the  Revolution  afforded.  And  in  thinking 
and  writing  of  the  common  duties  and  faith,  kindnesses 
and  truth  of  lowly  men,  he  found  in  Man  once  more 

**  an  object  of  delight, 
Of  pure  imaj^ination  and  of  love." 

With  that  he  recovered  also  his  interest  in  the  larger 
movements  of  mankind.  His  love  of  liberty  and 
hatred  of  oppression  revived.  He  saw  in  Napoleon  the 
enemy  of  man.  A  whole  series  of  sonnets  followed 
the  events  on  the  Continent.  One  recorded  his  horror 
at  the  attack  on  the  Swiss,  another  mourned  the  fate 
of  Venice,  another  the  fate  of  Toussaint  the  negro 
chief;  others  celebrated  the  struggle  of  Hofer  and  the 
Tyrolese,  others  the  struggle  of  Spain.  Two  thanks- 
giving odes  rejoiced  in  the  overthrow  of  the  oppressor 
at  Waterloo.  He  became  conservative  in  his  old 
age,  but  his  interest  in  social  and  national  movements 
did  not  decay.  He  wrote  on  Education,  the  Poor 
Laws,  and  other  subjects.  When  almost  seventy  he 
took  the  side  of  the  Carbonari,  and  sympathised 
with  the  Italian  struggle.  He  was  truly  a  poet  of 
Mankind.  But  his  chief  work  was  done  in  his  own 
country  and   among    his    own   folk;    and  he  is  the 


VIII.]  POETRY,  FROM  ino  TO  i^2>^,  175 

foremost  singer  of  those  who  threw  around  the  lives 
of  homely  men  and  women  the  glory  and  sweetness 
of  song.  He  made  his  verse  "  deal  boldly  with  sub- 
stantial things ;  "  his  theme  was  "  no  other  than  the 
very  heart  of  man ; "  and  his  work  has  become  what 
he  desired  it  to  be,  a  power  like  one  of  Nature's.  He 
lies  asleep  now  among  the  people  he  loved,  in  the 
green  churchyard  of  Grasmere,  by  the  side  of  the 
stream  of  Rothay,  in  a  place  as  quiet  as  his  life.  Few 
spots  on  earth  are  more  sacred  than  his  grave. 

145.  Sir  Walter  Scott  was  Wordsworth's  dear 
friend,  and  his  career  as  a  poet  began  when  Words- 
worth first  came  to  Grasmere,  with  the  Lay  of  the  Last 
Mi7istrel,  1805.  Marmion  followed  in  1808,  and  the 
Lady  of  the  Lake  in  18 10.  These  were  his  best 
poems  ;  the  others,  with  the  exception  of  some  lyrics 
which  touch  the  sadness  and  brightness  of  life  with 
equal  power,  do  not  count  in  our  estimate  of  him. 
He  perfected  the  narrative  poem.  In  Marmion  and 
the  Lady  of  the  Lake  his  wonderful  inventiveness  in 
narration  is  at  its  height,  and  it  is  matched  by  the 
vividness  of  his  natural  description.  No  poet,  and  in 
this  he  carries  on  the  old  Scotch  quality,  is  a  finer 
colourist.  Nearly  all  his  natural  description  is  of  the 
wild  scenery  of  the  Highlands  and  the  Lowland  moor- 
land. He  touched  it  with  a  pencil  so  light,  graceful, 
and  true,  that  the  very  names  are  made  for  ever 
romantic;  while  his  faithful  love  for  the  places  he 
describes  fills  his  poetry  with  the  finer  spirit  of  his 
own  tender  humanity. 

146.  Scotland  produced  another  poet  in  Thomas 
Campbell.  His  earliest  poem,  the  Pleasures  of  Hope, 
1799,  belonged  in  its  formal  rhythm  and  rhetoric, 
and  in  its  artificial  feeling  for  Nature,  to  the  time  of 
Thomson  and  Gray  rather  than  to  the  newer  time. 
His  later  poems,  such  as  Gertrude  of  Wyoming  and 
O'Connor's  Child,  are  more  natural,  but  they  are  not 
nature.     He  will  chiefly  live  by  his  lyrics,     Hohen- 


1 76  ENGLISH  LITER  A  TURE.  [chap. 

linden,  the  Battle  of  the  Baltic,  the  Marifiers  of  Eng- 
la?id,  are  splendid  specimens  of  the  war  poetry  of 
England  ;  and  the  Song  to  the  Evening  Star  and  Lord 
Ullin's  Daughter  are  full  of  tender  feeling,  and  mark 
the  influence  of  the  more  natural  style  that  Words- 
worth had  brought  to  perfection. 

147.  Rogers  and  Moore. — The  Pleasures  of 
Memory,  1792,  and  the  Italy,  181 2,  of  Samuel  Rogers, 
are  the  work  of  a  slow  and  cultivated  mind,  and 
contain  some  laboured  but  fine  descriptions.  The 
curious  thing  is  that,  living  apart  in  a  courtly  region 
of  culture,  there  is  not  a  trace  in  all  his  work  that 
Europe  and  England  and  Society  had  passed  during 
his  life  through  a  convulsion  of  change.  To  that 
convulsion  the  best  work  of  Thomas  Moore,  an 
Irishman,  may  be  referred.  Ireland  during  Moore's 
youth  endeavoured  to  exist  under  the  dreadful  and 
wicked  weight  of  its  Penal  Code.  The  excitement 
of  the  French  Revolution  kindled  the  anger  of 
Ireland  into  the  rebellion  of  1798,  and  Moore's 
genius  into  writing  songs  to  the  Irish  airs  collected 
in  1796.  The  best  of  these  have  for  their  hidden 
subject  the  struggle  of  Ireland  against  England. 
Many  of  them  have  great  lyrical  beauty ;  they 
always  have  soft  melody.  At  times  they  reach  true 
pathos,  but  oftenest  it  is  their  lightly-lifted  gaiety 
which  is  delightful,  and  they  all  have  this  excellence, 
that  they  are  truly  things  to  be  sung.  He  sang  them 
himself  in  society,  and  it  is  not  too  much  to  say  that 
they  helped  by  the  interest  they  stirred  to  further 
Catholic  Emancipation.  Moore's  Oriental  tales  in 
Lalla  Rookh  are  chiefly  flash  and  glitter,  but  they 
are  pleasant  reading.  His  vers  de  societe  are  as  light 
as  they  are  pointed,  and  his  satirical  songs  and 
poetical  letters,  written  to  assist  the  Liberal  party, 
are  the  cleverest  of  their  kind  that  we  possess. 

148.  The  post-Revolution  Poets. — We  turn 
to  very  diff"erent  types   of  men  when   we    come  to 


viii.]  POETRY,  FROM  1730  TO  1832.  177 

Lord  Byron,  Shelley  and  Keats,  whom  we  may  call 
post-Revolution  poets. 

Of  the  three,  Lord  Byron  had  most  of  the  quality 
we  may  call  force.  Born  in  1 7  88,  his  Hours  of  Idleness^ 
2l  collection  of  short  poems,  in  1807,  was  mercilessly 
lashed  in  the  Edinburgh  Review,  The  attack  only 
served  to  awaken  his  genius,  and  he  replied  with  as- 
tonishing vigour  in  the  satire  of  English  Bards  and 
Scotch  Reviewers  in  iSog.  Eastern  travel  gave  birth 
to  the  first  two  cantos  of  Childe  Harold^  181 2,  to  the 
Giaour  dcci^  \ki^  Bride  of  Abydos  in  18 13,  to  the  Cor- 
sair  and  Lara  in  18 14.  The  Siege  of  Corinth, 
Farisina,  the  Prisoner  of  Chi  lion,  Manfred,  and 
Childe  Harold  were  finished  before  1819.  Ini8i8 
he  began  a  new  style  in  Beppo,  which  he  developed 
fully  in  the  successive  issues  oi  Don  Juan,  1819-1823. 
During  this  time  he  published  a  number  of  dramas, 
partly  historical,  as  his  Marino  Faliero,  partly  imagi- 
native, as  the  Caiji.  His  life  had  been  wild  and  use- 
less, but  he  died  in  trying  to  redeem  it  for  the  sake  of 
the  freedom  of  Greece.  At  Missolonghi  he  was  seized 
with  fever,  and  passed  away  in  April,  1824. 

149.  The  position  of  Byron  as  a  poet  is  a 
curious  one.  He  is  partly  of  the  past  and  partly  of 
the  present.  Something  of  the  school  of  Pope  clings 
to  him ;  yet  no  one  so  completely  broke  away  from 
old  measures  and  old  manners  to  make  his  poetry 
individual,  not  imitative.  At  first  he  has  no  interest 
whatever  in  the  human  questions  which  were  so 
strongly  felt  by  Wordsworth  and  Shelley.  His  early 
vvork  is  chiefly  narrative  poetry,  written  that  he  might 
talk  of  himself  and  not  of  mankind.  Nor  has  he  any 
philosophy  except  that  which  centres  round  the  pro- 
blem of  his  own  being.  Cain,  the  most  thoughtful  of 
his  productions,  is  in  reality  nothing  more  than  the 
representation  of  the  way  in  which  the  doctrines  of 
original  sin  and  final  reprobation  affected  his  own  soul. 
We  feel  naturally  great  interest  in  this  strong  person- 


178  ENGLISH  LITERATURE,  [chap. 

ality,  put  before  us  with  such  obstinate  power,  but 
It  wearies  at  last.  P'inally  it  wearied  himself.  As 
he  grew  in  power,  he  esca()ed  from  his  morbid  self, 
and  ran  into  the  opposite  extreme  in  Don  Juan.  It 
is  chiefly  in  it  that  he  shows  the  influence  of  the  revo- 
lutionary spirit.  It  is  written  in  bold  revolt  against  all 
the  conventionality  of  social  morality  anil  religion  and 
politics.  It  claimed  for  himself  and  for  othtrs  abso- 
lute freedom  of  individual  act  and  thought  in  oppo- 
sition to  that  force  of  society  which  tends  to  make  all 
men  after  one  pattern.  This  was  the  best  result  of 
his  work,  though  the  way  in  which  it  was  done  can 
scarcely  be  approved.  He  escaped  still  more  from 
his  diseased  self  when,  fully  seized  Oi  by  the  new  spirit 
of  setting  men  free  from  oppression,  he  sacrificed  his 
life  for  the  deliverance  of  Greece. 

As  the  poet  of  Nature  \v^  bjlongs  also  to  the  old  and 
the  new  school.  Byron*s  sympathy  with  Nature  is  a 
sympathy  with  himself  reflected  in  her  moods.  But  he 
also  escapes  from  this  position  of  the  eighteenth- 
century  poets,  and  looks  on  Nature  as  ^ she  is,  apart 
from  himself;  and  this  escape  is  made,  as  in  the  case 
of  his  poetry  of  Man,  in  his  later  poems.  Lastly,  it  is 
his  colossal  power  and  the  ease  that  comes  from  it,  in 
which  he  resembles  Dryden,  that  marks  him  specially. 
But  it  is  always  more  power  of  the  intellect  than  of  the 
imagination. 

150.  In  Percy  Bysshe  Shelley,  on  the  contrary, 
the  imagination  is  supreme  and  the  intellect  its  ser- 
vant. He  produced  while  yet  a  boy  some  worthless 
tales,  but  soon  showed  in  Queen  Mab,  18 13,  the  in- 
fluence  of  the  revolutionary  era,  combined  in  him 
with  a  violent  attack  on  the  existing  forms  of  religion. 
The  poem  is  a  poor  one,  but  its  poverty  prophesies 
greatness.  Its  chief  idea  was  the  new  one  that  had 
come  into  literature — the  idea  of  the  destined  perfec- 
tion of  mankind  in  a  future  golden  age.  One  half  of 
Shelley's  poetry,  and  of  his  heart,  was  devoted  to  help 


VIII.]  POETRY,  FROM  i^zo  TO  1832.  179 

the  world  towards  this  idea,  and  to  denounce  and 
overthrow  all  that  stood  in  its  way.  The  other  half 
was  personal,  an  outpouring  of  himself  in  his  seeking 
after  the  perfect  ideal  he  could  not  find,  and,  sadder 
still,  could  not  even  conceive.  Queen  Mab  is  an 
example  of  the  first,  Alastor  of  the  second.  The 
hopes  for  man  with  which  Qtceen  Mab  was  written 
grew  cold,  he  himself  felt  ill  and  looked  for  death  ; 
the  world  seemed  chilled  to  all  the  ideas  he  loved, 
and  he  turned  from  writing  about  mankind  to  de- 
scribe in  Alastor  the  life  and  wandering  and  death 
of  a  lonely  poet.  But  the  Alastor  who  took  the  poet 
away  from  the  race  was,  in  Shelley's  own  thought, 
a  spirit  of  evil,  a  spirit  of  solitude,  and  his  next 
poem,  the  Revolt  of  J  slam  ^  181 7,  unites  him  again 
to  the  interests  of  mankind.  He  wrote  it  with  the 
hope  that  men  were  beginning  to  recover  from  the 
a])athy  and  despair  into  which  the  failure  of  the  revo- 
lutionary ideas  had  thrown  them,  and  to  show  them 
what  they  should  strive  and  hope  for,  and  destroy.  But 
it  is  still  only  a  martyr's  hope  that  the  poet  possesses. 
The  two  chief  characters,  Laon  and  Cythna,  die  in 
their  struggle  against  tyranny,  but  live  again  and  know 
that  their  sacrifice  will  bring  forth  the  fruit  of  freedom. 
The  poem  itself  has  finer  passages  in  it  than  Alastor, 
but  as  a  whole  it  is  inferior  to  it.  It  is  quite  formless. 
The  same  year  Shelley  went  to  Italy,  and  renewed 
health  and  the  climate  gave  him  renewed  power. 
Rosalind  and  Helen  appeared,  and  in  1^1^  Julian  and 
Maddalo  was  written.  In  the  second  of  these — a 
familiar  conversation  on  the  story  of  a  madman  in 
San  Lazzaro  at  Venice — his  poetry  becomes  more 
masculine,  and  he  has  for  the  first  time  won  mastery 
over  his  art.  The  new  life  and  joy  he  had  now  gained 
brought  back  his  enthusiasm  for  mankind,  and  he 
broke  out  into  the  splendid  lyric  drama  of  Prometheus 
Unbound,  Asia,  at  the  beginning  of  the  drama  separ- 
ated from  Prometheus,  is  the  all-pervading  Love  which 
16 


i8o  ENGLISH  LITERATURE.  [chap. 

in  loving  makes  the  universe  of  nature.  When  Pro- 
metheus is  united  to  Asia,  the  spirit  of  Love  in  Man 
is  wedded  to  the  spirit  of  Love  in  Nature,  and  Good 
is  all  in  all.  The  marriage  of  these  two,  and  the  distinct 
existence  of  each  for  that  purpose,  is  the  same  idea 
as  Wordsworth's  differently  expressed;  and  Shelley 
and  he  are  the  only  two  poets  who  have  touched 
it  philosophically,  Wordsworth  with  most  contem- 
plation, Shelley  with  most  imagination.  Prometheus 
Uiibound  is  the  finest  example  we  have  of  the  working 
out  in  poetry  of  the  idea  of  a  regenerated  universe, 
and  the  fourth  act  is  the  choral  song  of  its 
emancipation.  Then,  Shelley,  having  expressed  this 
idea  with  exultant  imagination,  turned  to  try  his 
matured  power  upon  other  subjects.  Two  of  these 
were  neither  personal  nor  for  the  sake  of  man. 
The  first  was  the  drama  of  the  Cenci^  the  gravest 
and  noblest  tragedy  since  Webster  wrote  which  we 
possess.  It  is  as  restrained  in  expression  as  the 
previous  poem  is  exuberant  :  yet  there  is  no  poem 
of  Shelley's  in  which  passion  and  thought  and 
imagery  are  so  wrought  together.  The  second  was 
the  Adonais,  a  lament  for  the  death  of  John  Keats. 
It  is  a  poem  written  by  one  who  seems  a  spirit 
about  a  spirit,  and  belongs  in  expression,  thought, 
and  feeling  to  that  world  above  the  senses  in 
which  Shelley  habitually  lived.  Of  all  this  class 
of  poems,  to  which  many  of  his  lyrics  belong, 
EpipsychidioJi  is  the  most  impalpable,  but,  to  those 
who  care  for  Shelley's  ethereal  world,  the  finest 
poem  he  ever  wrote.  Of  the  same  class  is  the  Witch 
of  Atlas,  the  poem  in  which  he  has  personified  divine 
Imagination  in  her  work  in  poetry,  and  all  her  atten- 
dants, and  all  her  doings  among  men. 

As  a  lyric  poet,  Shelley,  on  his  own  ground,  is  easily 
great.  Some  of  the  lyrics  are  purely  personal ;  some, 
as  in  the  very  finest,  the  Ode  to  the  West  Wind,  mingle 
together  personal  feeling  and  prophetic  hope  for  Man. 


VIII.]  POETRY,  FROM  1730  TO  1832.  181 

Some  are  lyrics  of  Nature;  some  are  dedicated  to 
the  rebukb  of  tyranny  and  the  cause  of  liberty  ;  others 
belong  to  the  passion  of  love,  and  others  are  written 
on  visions  of  those  "  shapes  that  haunt  Thought's 
wildernesses  '*  They  form  together  the  most  sensitive, 
the  most  imaginative,  and  the  most  musical,  but  the 
least  tangible  lyrical  poetry  we  possess. 

As  the  poet  of  Nature,  he  had  the  same  idea  as 
Wordsworth,  that  Nature  was  alive  :  but  while  Words- 
worth made  the  active  principle  which  filled  and  made 
Nature  to  be  Thought,  Shelley  made  it  Love.  As 
each  distinct  thing  in  Nature  had  to  Wordsworth  a 
thinking  spirit  in  it,  so  each  thing  had  to  Shelley  a 
loving  spirit  in  it :  even  the  invisible  spheres  of  vapour 
sucked  by  the  sun  from  the  forest  pool  had  each  their 
indwelling  spirit.  W^e  feel  then  that  Shelley,  as  well 
as  Wordsworth,  and  for  a  similar  reison,  could  give  a 
special  love  to,  and  therefore  describe  vividly,  each 
natural  thing  he  saw.  He  wants  the  closeness  of 
grasp  of  nature  which  Wordsworth  and  Keats  had, 
but  he  had  the  power  in  a  far  greater  degree  than  they 
of  describing  the  cloud-scenery  of  the  sky,  and  vast 
realms  of  landscape.  He  is  in  this,  as  well  as  in 
his  eye  for  subtle  colour,  the  Turner  of  poetry. 

Towards  the  end  of  his  life  his  verse  became 
overloaded  with  mystical  metaphysics.  What  he  might 
have  been  we  cannot  tell,  for  at  the  age  of  thirty  he 
left  us,  drowned  in  the  sea  he  loved,  washed  up  and 
burned  on  the  sandy  spits  near  Pisa.  His  ashes  lie 
beneath  the  walls  of  Rome,  and  Cor  cordium^  "  Heart 
of  hearts,'^  written  on  his  tomb,  well  says  what  all  who 
love  poetry  feel  w^hen  they  think  of  him. 

151.  John  Keats  lies  near  him,  cut  off  like  him 
ere  his  genius  ripened  ;  not  so  great,  but  possessing 
perhaps  greater  possibiHties  of  greatness  ;  not  so  ideal, 
but  for  that  very  reason  more  naturally  at  home  with 
nature  than  Shelley.  In  one  thing  he  was  entirely 
-  (jifferent  from  Shelley — he  had  no  care  whatever  for  the 


/82  ENGLISH  LITERATURE,  [chap. 

great  human  questions  which  stirred  Shelley ;  the  pre- 
sent was  entirely  without  interest  to  him.  He  marks 
the  close  of  that  poetic  movement  which  the  ideas  of 
the  Revolution  in  France  had  started  in  England,  as 
Shelley  marks  the  attempt  to  revive  it.  Keats,  see- 
ing nothing  to  move  him  in  an  age  which  had  now 
sunk  into  apathy  on  these  points,  went  back  to  Greek 
and  mediaeval  life  to  find  his  subjects,  and  established, 
in  doing  so,  that  which  has  been  called  the  literary 
poetry  of  England.  His  first  subject  after  some 
minor  poems  in  1817  was  Endymion^  18 18,  his  last, 
Hyperion^  1820.  These,  along  with  Lamia,  were 
poems  of  Greek  life.  Endymion  has  all  the  faults 
and  all  the  promise  of  a  great  poet's  early  work,  and 
no  one  knew  its  faults  better  than  Keats,  whose 
preface  is  a  model  of  just  self-judgment.  Ifyperion, 
a  fragment  of  a  tale  of  the  overthrow  of  the  Titans,  is 
itself  like  a  Titanic  torso,  and  in  it  the  faults  of  Endy- 
mion are  repaired  and  its  promise  fulfilled.  Both  are 
filled  with  that  which  was  deepest  in  the  mind  of 
Keats,  the  love  of  loveliness  for  its  own  sake,  the 
sense  of  its  rightful  and  pre-eminent  power ;  and  in 
the  singleness  of  worship  which  he  gave  to  Beauty, 
Keats  is  especially  the  artist,  and  the  true  father  of 
the  latest  modern  school  of  poetry.  Not  content 
with  carrying  us  into  Greek  life,  he  took  us  back 
into  mediaeval  romance,  and  in  this  also  he  started 
a  new  type  of  poetry.  There  are  two  poems  which 
mark  this  revival — Isabella^  and  the  Eve  of  St.  Ag/iss. 
Isabella  is  a  version  of  Boccaccio's  tale  of  the  Pot  of 
Basil ;  St.  Jgnes  Eve  is,  as  far  as  I  know,  invented. 
Mediaeval  in  subject,  they  are  modern  in  manner;  but 
they  are,  above  all,  of  the  poet  himself.  Their  magic 
is  all  his  own.  Their  originality  has  caused  much 
imitation  of  them,  but  they  are  too  original  for  imita- 
tion. In  smaller  poems,  such  as  the  Ode  to  a  Grecian 
Urn,  the  poem  to  Autumn^  and  some  sonnets,  he  is 
perhaps  at  his  very  best.     In  these  and  in  all,  his 


vin.]  POETKY,  FROM  \no  TO  \Zi2,  183 

painting  of  Nature  is  as  close,  as  direct  as  Words- 
worth's ;  less  full  of  the  imagination  that  links  human 
thought  to  Nature,  but  more  full  of  the  imagination 
which  broods  upon  enjoyment  of  beauty.  His  career 
was  short  j  he  had  scarcely  begun  to  write  when  death 
took  him  away  from  the  loveliness  he  loved  so  keenly. 
Consumption  drove  him  to  Rome,  and  there  he  died, 
save  for  one  friend,  now  also  dead,  alone.  He 
lies  not  far  from  Shelley,  on  **the  slope  of  green 
access,"  near  the  pyramid  of  Caius  Cestius. 

152.  Modern  English  Poetry. — Keats  marks 
the  exhaustion  of  the  impulse  which  began  with  Burns 
and  Cowper.  There  was  no  longer  now  in  England 
any  large  wave  of  pubHc  thought  or  feeling  such  as 
could  awaken  poetry.  We  have  then,  arising  after 
his  death,  a  number  of  pretty  little  poems,  having  no 
inward  fire,  no  idea,  no  marked  character.  Ihey 
might  be  written  by  any  versifier  at  any  time,  and 
express  pleasant  indifferent  thought  in  pleasant  verse. 
Such  were  Mrs.  Hemans's  poems,  and  those  of  L.  E.  L., 
and  such  were  Tennyson's  earliest  poems,  m  1830. 
But  with  the  Reform  agitation,  and  the  new  religious 
agitation  at  Oxford,  which  was  of  the  same  date,  a 
new  excitement  or  a  new  form  of  the  old,  came  on 
England,  and  with  it  a  new  tribe  of  poets  arose, 
among  whom  we  live.  The  elements  of  their  poetry 
were  also  new,  though  we  can  trace  their  beginnings  in 
the  previous  poetry.  It  took  up  the  theological,  scepti- 
cal, social,  and  political  questions  which  disturbed 
England.  It  gave  itself  to  metaphysics  and  to  analysis 
of  human  character.  It  studied  and  brought  to  great 
excellence  the  idyll.  It  carried  the  love  of  natural 
scenery  into  almost  every  county  in  England,  and 
described  the  whole  land. 

Two  of  these  men  stand  forth  from  the  rest,  and 
their  main  work  lies  behind  us.  The  first  of  these, 
Robert  Browning,  whose  wife  will  justly  share  his 
fame,  stands  quite  alone.     He  has  set  himself  more 


i84  ENGLISH  LITERATURE.  [chap 

than  any  other  English  poet  to  answer  the  question — 
What  is  the  end  of  life,  and  what  its  explanation — and 
he  has  answered  this  in  a  number  of  potms,  nar- 
rative, lyric,  dramatic,  and  ranging  Irom  the  times  of 
Athens  through  the  Renaissance  up  to  the  present  day. 
The  principles  laid  down  in  reply  are  always  the 
same,  but  their  exposition  is  contmually  varied.  He 
has  drawn  with  a  subtle,  stran>:e,  and  minute  pencil 
the  characters  of  men  and  women,  of  an  age,  of 
a  town,  of  phases  of  passion,  even  of  sudden 
moments  of  passion ;  and  in  doing  so  his  imagina- 
tion has  wrought  hatul  in  hand  with  Thought  which, 
inventing  as  it  winds  through  its  subject,  has  perhaps 
too  much  scientihc  pleasure  in  itself.  Art,  music, 
classical  learning,  the  semipaganism  of  the  Renais- 
sance, the  remoter  phases  of  early  Christianity,  have 
each,  in  specialised  phases  of  them,  been  set  vividly 
into  poetry  by  his  work.  He  has  excelled,  when  he 
chose,  in  light  narrative,  in  lyrics  of  love  and  of  war. 
Natural  scenery,  and  especially  that  of  Italy,  he 
paints  with  fire,  but  he  does  his  best  work  when  the 
landscape  is,  like  his  characters,  a  special  or  a  strange 
one.  He  is  an  intellectual  poet,  but  neither  imagina- 
tion nor  the  passion  of  his  subject  fail  him. 

The  second  of  these  poets  is  Alfred  Tennyson,  and 
he  has  for  more  than  forty  years  remained  at  the  head  of 
modern  poetry.  All  the  great  subjects  of  his  time  he 
has  toucned  poetically,  and  enlightened.  His  feeHng 
for  nature  is  accurate,  loving,  and  of  a  wide  range. 
His  human  sympathy  fills  as  wide  a  field.  The  large 
interests  of  mankind,  and  of  his  own  time,  the  lives 
of  simple  people,  and  the  subtler  phases  of  thought 
and  feeling  which  arise  in  our  overwrought  society 
are  wisely  and  tenderly  written  of  in  his  poems.  His 
drawing  of  distinct  human  cnaracters  is  the  best  we 
have  in  pure  poetry  since  Chaucer  wrote.  He  makes 
true  songs  ;  and  he  has  excelled  all  English  writers  in 
the  pure  Idyll.     The  /^'//y  vf  the  King  are  a  kind  of 


VIII.]  POETRY,  FROM  \no  TO  \%Z2,  185 

epic,  and  he  has  lately  tried  the  drama.  In  lyrical 
measures,  as  in  the  form  of  his  blank  verse,  he  is 
as  inventive  as  original.  Ii  is  by  the  breadth  ot  his 
range  that  he  most  conclusively  takes  the  first  place 
among  the  modern  poets. 

Within  the  lasi  ten  years,  the  impulse  given  in  '32 
has  died  away  and  the  same  thing  which  we  find  in  the 
case  of  Keats  has  again  taken  place.  A  new  class  of 
literary  poets  has  arisen,  who  have  no  care  for  a 
present  they  think  dull,  for  religious  questions  to 
which  they  see  no  end.  They  too  have  gone  back  to 
Greek  and  mediaeval  and  old  Norse  life  for  their 
subjects.  They  find  much  of  their  inspiration  in 
Italy  and  in  Chaucer  ;  but  they  continue  the  love 
poetry  and  the  poetry  of  natural  descripdon.  It 
is  some  pity  that  so  much  of  their  work  is  apart 
from  English  subjects,  but  we  need  not  be  ungrate- 
ful enough  to  complain,  for  Tennyson  has  always  kept 
us  close  to  the  scenery,  the  traditions,  the  daily  life 
and  the  history  of  England;  and  his  poem,  the 
drama  of  Harold,  1877,  is  written  almost  exactly 
twelve  hundred  years  since  the  date  of  our  first 
poem,  Caedmon's  Paraphrase.  To  think  of  one  and 
then  of  the  other,  and  of  the  great  and  continuous 
stream  of  literature  that  has  flowed  between  them, 
is  more  than  enough  to  make  us  all  proud  of  the 
name  of  Englishmen. 


186  AMERICAN  LITERATURE.  [chap 


AMERICAN    LITERATURE. 


CHAPTER   IX. 
1647-1895. 

Section  i.  Success  of  a  Literature  —  the  Colonists  —  Public 
Schools.  2.  Colonial  Period.  3  and  4.  Jonathan  Edwards 
— his  Influence.  5.  Benjamin  Franklin.  6.  A  Change. 
7.  The  Federalist.  8.  Newspapers  and  Journalists.  9.  Ear- 
ly Novelists.  10.  Irving  and  his  Friends.  11.  Theological 
Opinions.  12.  Historians.  13.  Poetry.  14.  Subjects  and 
Readers.  15.  Periodicals.  16.  Newspapers.  17.  Miscel- 
laneous Writers.  18.  Political  Discussions.  19.  Essayists. 
20.  Later  Novelists.  21.  Poets  of  the  Present.  22.  Novels 
and  Poetry.  23.  Female  Writers.  24.  Fiction  for  a  Pur- 
pose. 25.  Theological  and  Biblical  Writers.  26.  Church 
Histories.  27.  Jurisprudence.  28.  Other  Authors.  29. 
The  Outlook. 

I.  The  Success  of  a  Literature  depends  quite 
as  much  upon  the  number  and  intelligence  of  its 
readers  as  upon  its  authors.  Though  in  theory  writ- 
ten to  please,  it  should  in  addition  be  joined  with 
the  useful ;  and,  whether  in  prose  or  poetry,  ought 
to  exert  an  influence  that  would  make  one  the  better 
for  reading  it. 

The  Colonists — the  germs  of  the  American  na- 
tion— brought  with  them,  to  a  certain  extent,  the 
culture,  the  education,  the  refinement  of  the  England 
of  that  day.  This  influence  led  them,  even  in  ad- 
vance of  the  mother-land,  to  introduce  public  schools. 
In  New  England  these  were  begun  as  soon  as  need- 
ed, and,  within  less  than  thirty  years  from  the  first 


IX.]  FROM  1647    TO  1895.  187 

landing  at  Plymouth,  they  were  established  on  a 
firm  basis  (1647) — the  first  instance  in  Christendom 
when  the  civil  government  put  in  practice  the  train- 
ing of  an  intelligent  people  by  educating  all  its  youth; 
the  result  has  been  a  nation  of  readers. 

2.  The  Literature  of  the  First  Century  of 
the  colonial  period  was  but  a  reflection  of  that  of 
England  ;  this  arose  naturally  from  the  intimate  re- 
lations maintained  between  the  colonists  and  the 
mother-country,  and  in  no  respect  were  the  former 
more  dependent  upon  the  latter  than  in  this.  Though 
some  books  and  numerous  pamphlets  were  written 
during  this  period,  yet  scarcely  a  treatise,  nor  even 
a  pamphlet,  survives  except  as  a  curiosity ;  they  were 
elicited  by  local  causes,  and  were  of  temporary  in- 
terest, and,  properly  speaking,  had  no  material  influ- 
ence in  moulding  the  characteristics  of  our  present 
literature. 

3.  We  now  come  to  Jonathan  Edwards  (1703 — 
1757)?  the  metaphysician  and  theologian ;  the  first 
American  writer  to  attain  a  European  reputation. 
With  him  properly  begins  American  literature,  as 
the  influence  of  his  writings  passed  over  the  colonial 
period  into  the  present  time.  Edwards  wrote  a 
number  of  books,  two  of  which  are  to-day  deemed 
standard  works ;  the  one  on  The  Religious  Affec- 
tionsy  the  other  on  the  Freedom  of  the  Will,  and 
Moral  Agency.  The  latter,  especially,  has  been  sub- 
jected to  the  severest  criticism  by  the  ablest  theo- 
logians and  philosophers  from  time  to  time,  yet  in 
its  main  positions  it  still  remains  apparently  as  im- 
pregnable as  ever.  At  thirteen  Edwards  entered 
Yale  College.  Thoughtful  beyond  his  years,  a  meta- 
physician by  nature,  he  studied  and  appreciated 
Locke  on  the  Understanding.  In  after-years  he  dis- 
played in  his  writings  a  wonderful  power  in  unravel- 
ling the  mysteries  of  the  human  mind. 

4.  The   Influence  of  Edwards  was  clearly 


l88  AMERICAN  LITERATURE.  [chab. 

seen  in  the  theological  literature  of  the  succeeding 
half-century,  and  in  the  writings  of  certain  theolo- 
gians of  New  England :  Drs.  Samuel  Hopkins,  a 
pupil  of  Edwards,  and  Nathaniel  Emmons,  and 
Timothy  Dwight,  grandson  of  Edwards,  and  Presi- 
dent of  Yale  College.  The  latter's  Theology  Explained 
and  Defe7tded  was  published  near  the  end  of  the  cen- 
tury. It  was  a  series  of  popular  sermons,  and  had 
an  almost  unbounded  influence  upon  the  religious 
public,  who  in  that  day  read,  it  would  seem,  more 
theology  in  proportion  than  they  do  now.  Dr.  Dwight 
differed  from  Edwards  on  some  points,  yet  in  the 
main  holding  the  same  views.  This  work  passed 
through  many  editions  both  in  this  country  and  in 
England.  The  writings  of  these  men  had  much  to 
do  in  shaping  the  theological  opinions  of  that  period. 
This  branch  of  American  literature  has  been  always 
one  of  importance. 

5.  Benjamin  Franklin  (1706 — 1790),  born  in 
Boston,  the  son  of  a  taLow-chandler,  but  of  limited 
means,  so  that  at  ten  years  of  age  the  son  was  taken 
from  school  to  aid  his  father  in  supporting  the  fam- 
ily, which  consisted  of  seventeen  children.  Fond  of 
books,  the  thoughtful  boy  even  then  showed  that 
practical  wisdom  which  has  rendered  him  famous. 
He  chose  the  printer's  business,  thinking  it  would 
give  him  greater  facilities  for  reading.  At  fifteen  he 
began  writing  for  the  New  England  Couranty  a  paper 
published  by  an  elder  brother,  who  treated  him 
harshly;  and  young  Franklin,  at  the  age  of  seven- 
teen, selling  what  books  he  had,  set  out  alone  to  seek 
his  fortune.  He  came  to  Philadelphia,  where  he 
obtained  employment  as  a  journeyman  printer,  mean- 
time plying  his  pen  incessantly,  and  always  accepta- 
bly to  his  readers.  In  seven  years  he  became  the 
proprietor  of  a  newspaper.  In  this  he  wielded  a 
power  in  society,  in  politics,  and  in  literature. 

He  became  a  benefactor  to  the  city  of  his  adop 


IX.]  FROM  1647    TO  1895.  189 

tion  by  his  efforts  in  founding  a  Public  Library,  Phil- 
osophical Society,  and  an  Academy — the  germ  of 
the  present  University  of  Pennsylvania.  He  wrote 
many  essays  and  pamphlets  on  various  subjects,  in- 
cluding scientific  and  moral,  meanwhile  publishing 
for  twenty-five  years  Poor  Richard's  Almanac,  In 
this  he  inculcated  his  notions  of  economy,  which  had 
a  very  beneficial  effect  upon  the  people.  His  wri- 
tings had  a  marked  influence  upon  the  literature  of 
the  times;  and,  even  when  actively  engaged  in  the 
public  service,  he  always  found  time  to  do  good  by 
means  of  his  pen.  He  was  noted  for  his  keenness  of 
perception  and  common-sense ;  his  imagination  was 
quick,  but  not  extravagant ;  his  mental  constitution 
so  evenly  balanced  that  he  rarely,  if  ever,  made  a 
mistake  as  a  diplomatist  or  as  a  statesman. 

6.  A  Change. — Quite  a  change  came  over  the 
literature  of  the  period  between  the  close  of  the 
French  War  in  1763  and  the  beginning  of  the  Revo- 
lution in  1775.  Questions  pertaining  to  civil  liberty 
and  the  rights  of  the  colonists  crowded  out  all  oth- 
ers, and  the  discussions  on  these  absorbing  themes 
engaged  the  writers,  the  preachers,  and  the  orators 
of  the  times,  and  gave  tone  to  the  literature.  Promi- 
nent among  orators  in  these  discussions  were  James 
Otis,  John  and  Samuel  Adams,  of  Massachusetts ; 
in  New  York  were  Alexander  Hamilton  and  John 
Jay  ;  in  Virginia,  Patrick  Henry,  James  Madison, 
Thomas  Jefferson,  and  others.  The  numerous 
speeches  and  state  papers,  and  other  political  wri- 
tings, of  these  statesmen  and  their  compatriots,  are 
among  the  treasures  of  our  political  history.  The 
collected  writings  of  George  Washington  alone 
amount  to  twelve  large  volumes;  thecc  consist  of 
addresses,  messages,  and  letters,  all  written  in  a  con- 
cise  and  clear  style. 

7.  The  Federalist. — The  period  from  the  close 
of  the  Revolution  to  the  adoption  of  the  Constitu- 


igo  AMERICAN  LITERATURE,  [chap. 

tion  and  inauguration  of  Washington  was  noted  for 
the  many  discussions  on  the  form  of  government  to 
be  adopted  for  the  whole  country,  and  for  the  pro- 
duction of  the  celebrated  Essays^  now  a  standard 
work  known  as  the  Federalist^  written  by  Jay,  Madi- 
son, and  Hamilton.  These  Essays  had  evidently  a 
great  effect  upon  the  minds  of  the  people ;  a  striking 
instance  of  elaborate  thoughts  and  views  reaching 
the  common  mind  by  first  influencing  the  more  cul- 
tured classes,  and  through  them  the  people. 

8.  Newspapers  and  Journalists. — From  the 
inauguration  of  Washington  onward  was  a  great  in- 
crease in  newspapers  and  journalists,  of  whom  many 
were  foreigners,  and  the  first  in  this  country  to  enter 
upon  journalism  as  a  profession.  Their  influence  in 
literature  was  great,  and  continued  till  after  the  War 
of  1812  ;  soon  after  which  period  the  American  wri- 
ters seemed  to  become  disenthralled,  and  cut  them- 
selves loose  from  so  close  imitation  of  English  models, 
and  bounded  forward  to  attain  success  in  a  field  of 
their  own.  The  time  came  when  political  questions 
were  less  absorbing,  and  the  people  turned  their  at- 
tention more  to  reading  on  other  and  general  sub- 
jects, and  writers  sprang  up  to  answer  the  demand. 

9.  Early  Novelists. — The  harbinger  in  the  field 
of  romance  was  Charles  Brockden  Brown  (1771 — 
1 8 10),  a  native  of  Philadelphia.  His  first  work — 
Wieland—^2.^  published  in  1798  ,  this  was  followed 
by  three  others.  As  a  writer  he  was  graphic  in  style, 
not  wanting  in  imagination ;  but,  perhaps  owing  to  his 
continued  ill-health,  his  stories  leave  a  sombre  rather 
than  a  cheery  impression.  He  is  said  to  have  been 
the  first  American  author  to  follow  literature  as  a 
profession,  devoting  much  of  his  time  in  writing  for 
a  periodical — The  Literary  Magazine — that  he  had 
established. 

Then  comes  James  Fenimore  Cooper  (1789- 
185 1),  a  prolific  writer  of  novels,  thirty-four  in  num- 


IX.]  FROM  1647    TO  1895.  191 

ber,  besides  several  other  works,  one  of  which  is  an 
elaborate  history  of  the  United  States  Navy.  His 
novels,  except  the  first,  Precaution^  founded  on  Eng- 
lish life,  met  with  unexampled  success.  The  Spy^  his 
second,  was  received  with  marked  favour  both  in  this 
country  and  in  England,  where  it  was  at  once  re- 
published ;  each  succeeding  book  added  to  his  repu- 
tation. The  scenes  described  were  for  the  most  part 
American,  and  the  stories  came  home  to  the  people. 
These  books  gave  evidence  of  an  original  genius, 
while  their  moral  tone  was  unexceptionable. 

10.  Irving  and  his  Friends.  —  Washington 
Irving  (1783 — 1859),  a  native  of  New  York  City, 
stands  preeminent  among  American  authors.  Blest 
with  an  easy,  flowing  style,  and  having  acute  percep- 
tions, he  was  able  to  express  his  thoughts  with  re- 
markable clearness,  and  withal  pervading  the  whole 
with  a  quiet  humour,  or,  when  appropriate,  with  a 
delicate  and  touching  pathos.  No  author  has  had 
so  genial  an  influence  on  American  literature.  His 
writings  were  numerous — the  Sketch-Book^  perhaps, 
the  most  popular — they  mostly  consisting  of  sketches 
and  short  stories,  a  humorous  history  of  his  native 
city,  and  biographies,  ending  with  a  Life  of  Wash- 
ington— a  work  of  love,  and  the  crowning  one  of  his 
life. 

Contemporary  with  Irving  was  James  K.  Pauld- 
ing, who  for  a  time  was  associated  with  him  in 
conducting  a  periodical  —  Salmagundi — which  was 
modelled  somewhat  after  the  British  Essayists,  Also 
Joseph  Rodman  Drake  (who  died  young),  the  au- 
thor of  The  Culprit  Fay — "  the  richest  creation  of 
pure  fancy  in  our  literature  " — and  the  famous  lyric, 
The  American  Flag.  With  these  was  associated 
Fitz-Greene  Halleck  (1790 — 1867).  They  formed 
a  coterie  of  their  own,  of  which  Halleck  may  be 
designated  the  lyric  poet. 

11.  Theological  Opinions.— American    litera- 

17 


192  AMERICAN  LITERA  TURK.  [chap. 

ture  has  always  been  more  or  less  imbued  with  theo- 
logical opinions,  and  sometimes  debates  have  been 
elicited  by  differences  in  the  interpretation  of  the 
Bible,  and  in  the  speculations  of  theologians.  One 
of  the  most  noted  of  these  controversies,  and  which 
lasted  for  years,  was  the  conflict  between  the  Trini- 
tarians and  the  Unitarians,  the  former  usually  termed 
the  orthodox.  The  centre  was  in  and  around  Bos- 
ton ;  but  it  finally  took  in  New  England,  and  after- 
ward extended  to  New  York  and  New  Jersey.  In 
this  controversy  the  people  took  more  than  usual 
interest,  as  they  are  accustomed  in  religious  ques- 
tions, especially  those  involving  vital  principles. 

The  first  in  influence  among  Unitarians  was  Wil- 
liam Ellery  Channing  (1780 — 1842),  one  of  the 
most  remarkable  literary  men  of  the  period  ;  de- 
manding, by  his  great  merits  as  a  charming  and 
vigorous  writer,  the  respect  of  his  opponents,  and  by 
his  generous  and  noble  nature  the  admiration  and 
devoted  attachment  of  those  who  knew  him  in  social 
life.  With  Channing  were  associated  Andrews  Nor- 
ton, Professor  of  Sacred  Literature  in  Harvard,  and 
Henry  Ware,  "  Hollis  Professor  "  of  Divinity  in  the 
same.  In  the  orthodox  behalf  were  found  Dr.  Sam- 
uel Worcester,  of  Salem,  and  Professors  Leonard 
Woods  and  Moses  Stuart,  of  Andover.  The  Uni- 
tarians established  the  Christian  Examiner  as  theii 
organ,  and  the  Trinitarians  the  Panoplist.  The  two 
periodicals  were  read  by  thousands  and  thousands. 
It  shows  the  general  intelligence  of  the  people  at 
large,  that  these  learned  disquisitions  were  so  much 
read  and  studied.  Into  this  earnest,  but  upon  the 
whole  courteous,  controversy  others  were  also  drawn  ; 
and  Lyman  Beecher,  in  the  prime  of  his  strength, 
took  part ;  while  the  outside  theological  world — those 
comprising  the  Calvinistic  wing — were  also  drawn  in, 
and  Professors  Archibald  Alexander  and  Charles 
Hodge,  of  the  Presbyterian  Seminary  at  Princeton 


IX.]  FROM  1647    TO  1895.  193 

took  part.  Meanwhile  the  ranks  of  the  Unitarians 
were  recruited  by  Drs.  Orville  Dewey,  William 
H.  FuRNESS,  and  Andrew  P.  Peabody. 

12.  Historians. — In  the  department  of  History 
our  literature  is  rich,  and  in  this  respect  the  last 
half-century  has  been  prolific.  The  histories  of 
William  H.  Prescott  (1796 — 1859)  and  John 
LoTHROP  Motley  (1814 — 1877)  pertain  to  foreign 
countries,  as  do  in  part  those  of  Francis  Parkman. 
These  are  all  recognized  as  standard  works.  The 
first  wrote  the  History  of  Ferdinand  and  Isabella^ 
Conquest  of  Mexico^  Conquest  of  Peru^  Life  of  Philip 
II. y  and  other  works  ;  the  second  wrote  The  Pise  of 
the  Dutch  Republic^  the  History  of  the  United  Nether- 
lands^ and  the  Life  of  John  of  Barneveld ;  and  the 
last  wrote  France  and  England  in  America^  and  Fon-^ 
tiac's  War. 

George  Bancroft  (1800 — 1891),  Richard 
HiLDRETH  (1807 — 1865),  and  George  Tucker,  of 
Virginia,  have  written  histories  of  the  United  States. 
The  first,  in  twelve  volumes,  including  the  Forma- 
tion of  the  Constitution^  brings  the  history  to  1787  ; 
the  second  brings  it  down  to  1821,  in  six  volumes; 
the  third  goes  over  nearly  the  same  ground  as  the 
second.  The  histories  of  the  United  States,  for  the 
use  of  schools,  are  very  numerous,  among  which 
those  of  Lossing  and  Quackenbos  hold  a  promi- 
nent place.  Patton's  Four  Hundred  Years  of  Ameri- 
can History  \s  designed  to  fill  the  place  between  the 
school  histories  and  the  more  extensive  ones  just 
mentioned.  John  Gorham  Palfrey  has  written 
a  very  full  and  complete  history  of  New  England. 
J ARED  Sparks  has  written  brief  biographies  of  many 
prominent  Americans,  and  also  edited  the  writings 
of  George  Washington,  in  twelve  volumes,  and  those 
of  Benjamin  Franklin  in  ten,  and  likewise  the  Diplo- 
matic Correspondence  of  the  American  Revolution. 

13.  Poetry, — American  poetry  may  be  compared 


C94  AMERICAN  LITERATURE,  [chap. 

with  that  written  in  the  mother-land  within  the  last 
half-century,  rather  than  with  that  of  any  former 
time.  During  this  later  period  the  more  frequent 
communication  between  English  and  American  au 
thors  and  readers  led  to  a  literary  sympathy,  which 
allured  the  poetry  of  the  two  countries  into  similar 
forms  of  thought  and  choice  of  subjects  that  required 
similar  treatment. 

William  Cullen  Bryant  (1794 — 1878)  in  his 
poetry  is  an  interpreter  of  Nature,  and  equally  happy 
in  religious  sentiment  and  love  of  freedom.  All  that 
he  has  written  has  been  with  great  skill  and  unweary- 
ing care.  His  short  poems  upon  subjects  drawn  from 
Nature  come  home  to  the  hearts  of  his  readers.  His 
life  was  a  busy  one.  Precocious  as  a  boy — for  at 
the  age  of  ten  he  began  to  write  verses  for  a  neigh- 
boring country  paper — he  never  relaxed  in  his  in- 
dustry as  a  writer  and  editor,  both  literary  and  polit- 
ical, and  no  doubt  he  was  the  happier  for  it.  Even 
when  he  had  passed  beyond  the  age  allotted  to  man, 
he  translated,  with  a  poet's  grace  and  appreciation, 
both  the  Iliad  and  Odyssey  of  Homer. 

Henry  Wadsworth  Longfellow(i8o7 — 1882) 
began  his  literary  career  early,  and,  not  trusting 
alone  to  the  inspiration  of  genius,  was  always  a 
diligent  student.  He  deservedly  acquired  great 
popularity  both  in  America  and  England,  where  his 
writings  are  usually  republished.  He  wrote  prose 
with  as  much  success  as  poetry,  though  by  the  latter 
he  is  better  known  and  appreciated.  In  his  writings 
are  found  purity  of  sentiment,  nobleness  of  thought, 
and  a  deep  sympathy  with  humanity.  His  minor 
pieces  have  gone  into  almost  every  intelligent 
household  in  the  land,  and  have  had  influence  for 
good.  Many  of  his  poems  are  on  American  sub- 
jects; this  aids  in  making  them  national,  and  in 
promoting  a  taste  for  a  home  literature.  Such  poems 
are  an  incentive  to  patriotism.    Who  does  not  know 


IX.]  FROM  1647    TO   1895.  195 

the  Psalm  of  Life,  The  Reaper  and  the  Flowers  ?  or 
who  has  not  read  Evangeline,  or  been  fascinated  with 
the  peculiar  rhythm  of  Hiaivathal  On  the  fiftieth 
anniversary  of  his  graduation  (1875)  from  Bowdoin 
College  he  read  a  strikingly  beautiful  poem,  Mori- 
turi  Salutamus,  full  of  manly,  generous  feeling  and 
noble  thoughts.  He  also  wrote  several  prose  works, 
and  made  a  translation  of  the  Divine  Comedy  of 
Dante,  deemed  far  superior  to  any  former  one. 

John  Greenleaf  Whittier  (1807 — 1892)  has 
been  characterized  as  the  poet  of  freedom  and  hu- 
manity, and  richly  deserves  the  compliment.  Dur- 
ing the  antislavery  discussions,  his  poetry,  by  its 
defiant  and  spirited  tone,  exerted  great  influence; 
and  during  the  Civil  War  his  soul-stirring  strains 
sounded  through  the  land,  animating  the  friends  of 
the  nation.  His  later  poems  are  Tent  on  the  Beach, 
Snow  Bound,  The  Vision  of  Echard,  and  others. 

In  this  connection  belong  Oliver  Wendell 
Holmes  (1809)  and  James  Russell  Lowell  (1819 — 
1891),  both  professors  in  Harvard,  both  filling  an 
honorable  place  in  literature;  both  humorists,  but 
far  more  ;  each  writing  successfully  both  prose  and 
poetry;  subtile  critics,  genial  but  kindly  severe; 
both  interested  in  Xht  Atlantic  Monthly,  the  latter  for 
a  time  its  editor,  and  also  of  the  North  American  Re- 
view. Holmes  has  written  a  great  number  of  poems, 
none  long,  and  several  books  in  prose,  as  The  Auto- 
crat of  the  Breakfast  Table,  The  Guardian  Angel,  and 
others.  Lowell  wrotea  Fable  for  Critics,  The  Big  low 
Papers,  Among  my  Books,  and  many  others.  He  was 
American  Minister  to  Spain,  and  also  to  England. 

14.  Subjects  and  Readers. — Hosts  of  writers, 
male  and  female,  are  now  assiduously  cultivating  our 
field  of  literature,  the  greater  number  of  whom  draw 
their  inspiration  from  scenes  partaking  of  domestic 
life  rather  than  from  antiquity  or  classic  ground,  or 
from  foreign  lands.  The  majority  of  those  who  read 


196  AMERICAN  LITERATURE,  [chap. 

the  poetry  and  light  literature  of  the  day  are  not 
found  so  much  among  the  highly  educated,  but 
among  those,  in  this  respect,  the  middle  classes. 
Their  minds  have  not  been  trained  to  the  higher 
exertion  of  thought  induced  by  laborious  study ;  but 
they  are  by  no  means  deficient  in  general  intelligence, 
and  are  thereby  able  to  appreciate  the  beautiful  in 
Nature  or  in  its  description.  This  great  class  find 
in  genuine  poetical  thought,  whether  in  the  garb  of 
poetry  or  in  the  form  of  prose,  an  echo  to  their  own 
feelings  and  sympathies  in  descriptions  and  senti- 
ments drawn  from  domestic  scenes,  and  find  emo- 
tions delineated  which  they  recognise  as  belonging 
to  themselves.  There  are  millions  such,  whose  only 
mental  luxury  is  appreciative  reading.  They  are 
by  no  means  confined  to  fiction,  but  are  also  led  to 
read  works  of  a  more  substantial  character. 

15.  Periodicals. — Our  writers  of  fiction  have 
increased  greatly  within  the  last  quarter  of  a  cen- 
tury. This  class  of  literature  has  received  an  im- 
pulse from  the  establishment  of  periodicals — monthly 
or  otherwise — of  an  advanced  literary  character ;  it 
also  has  had  influence  in  moulding  the  public  taste, 
and  well  it  may ;  in  them  are  found  some  of  the  best 
authors,  American  and  English,  side  by  side,  engaged 
in  instructing  their  readers.  This  is  one  of  the  best 
features  of  these  literary  times,  that  the  minds  of  the 
reading  public  are  thus  brought  in  contact  with  the 
best  thoughts  of  the  age,  properly  expressed  in  clas- 
sic English,  thus  training  the  minds  of  the  people 
for  a  still  clearer  appreciation  of  literature,  and  a 
higher  plane  of  general  culture.  Among  this  class 
of  writers  woman  sustains  her  part  with  tact,  great 
zeal,  and  success.  A  graceful  versifier,  she  writes 
the  greater  part  of  the  poetry  of  the  papers  and  peri- 
odicals. 

16.  Newspapers.  —  In  connection  with  this 
should  be  mentioned  the  literature  of  the  newspaper, 


IX.]  FROM  1647    TO  1895.  197 

aside  from  its  merely  furnishing  the  news  of  the  day. 
In  them  are  often  found  discussions  of  important 
questions  relating  to  the  improvement  of  society  or 
its  material  progress.  These  articles  are  written  by 
able  men,  and  frequently  in  a  style  graceful  and 
racy,  and  often  vigorous  and  trenchant.  Thus  the 
paper  becomes  a  power  for  good  in  diffusing  knowl- 
edge, especially  in  the  notices  of  books,  which  treat 
of  so  many  subjects — history,  travels,  scientific  dis- 
coveries, and  the  moral  and  industrial  movements 
of  the  times.  The  majority  of  readers  are  unable  to 
purchase  all  these  books  thus  noticed,  nor  have  they 
time  to  read  them ;  but  by  this  means  intelligent 
men  and  women  can  obtain  a  fair  knowledge  of 
books,  and  of  the  topics  of  which  they  treat. 

17.  Miscellaneous  Writers. — There  are  a  host 
of  writers  who  treat  of  miscellaneous  subjects,  and, 
if  space  permitted,  would  deserve  mention.  Their 
labors  are  not  without  reward  and  success  in  their 
respective  fields  in  promoting  a  high  moral  tone  of 
culture  and  refinement  in  social  life. 

18.  Political  Discussions. — The  debates  in 
Congress  have  had  influence  in  moulding  that  por- 
tion of  American  literature  which  belongs  to  politics, 
as  understood  in  the  best  sense ;  for  the  laws  of  the 
Government,  and  its  policy  at  different  times,  have 
always  interested  the  thinking  portion  of  the  people. 
This  arises  from  the  nature  of  the  case,  when  they, 
as  voters,  have  to  do  with  the  government  of  the 
nation. 

It  was  a  brilliant  period  in  this  field  when  Henry 
Clay,  John  C.  Calhoun,  Daniel  Webster,  Robert 
Y.  Hayne,  and  others,  discussed  questions  of  nation- 
al importance.  These  discussions  have  been  re- 
ported, and  are  valuable  as  specimens  of  eloquence 
— the  contrast  between  these  great  leaders  is  very 
characteristic. 

The  Contrast  — Webster's  speeches,  addresses,  ar- 


igS  AMERICAN  LITERATURE,  [chap. 

guments,  and  state  papers,  read  to-day  as  if  imbued 
with  the  spirit  that  inspired  them  at  the  moment  of 
delivery — and  they  are  almost  as  fresh  to  the  read- 
er as  they  were  to  the  hearer — they  glow  with  the 
eloquence  of  thought.  Henry  Clay's  are  smooth  and 
elegant,  but  need  the  grace,  the  animation  of  the 
orator,  who,  at  the  time,  by  his  magnetism,  allured 
his  hearers  into  sympathy  with  himself,  and  com- 
pelled acquiescence  in  his  arguments.  Calhoun, 
more  theoretical  than  practical,  held  his  hearers  by 
the  fascination  of  easy,  flowing  sentences,  that  were 
designed  to  support  fine-spun  theories.  His  was  the 
eloquence  of  metaphysics— though  persuasive  at  the 
time,  to  his  reader  cold  and  plausible. 

The  Antislavery  Agitation  poured  forth  a  stream 
of  thrilling  eloquence  that  astonished  the  country. 
The  pungent  addresses  and  writings  of  those  who 
opposed  the  system  sounded  through  the  land,  and 
from  their  very  earnestness  compelled  an  audience. 

Our  literature  is  rich  in  the  eloquence  of  states- 
men and  orators  on  almost  every  subject  capable  of 
being  elucidated  by  the  living  speaker.  The  works 
and  writings  of  such  men  and  scholars  as  Edward 
Everett,  Charles  Sumner,  William  H.  Seward, 
and  many  others,  are  a  treasure  of  great  value  to  the 
nation. 

19.  Essayists. — We  have  a  series  of  writings, 
which  take  the  form  of  essays,  on  all  subjects  con- 
nected with  man,  and  in  the  elucidation  of  Nature. 
Ralph  Waldo  Emerson  (1803 — 1882) — author  of 
several  important  works — may  be  considered  the 
head  of  this  school  of  writers.  They  have  had  great 
influence  in  directing  the  American  mmd  to  the 
study  of  man  in  his  relations  to  life  and  social  aims. 

The  finished  style,  for  the  most  part,  of  these 
writers  has  had  a  beneficial  effect  in  improving  the 
literary  taste  of  the  reading  public.  Emerson  wrote 
Essays,  Representative  Men,  English  Traits,  Letters  and 


IX.]  FROM  1647    TO   1895.  igg 

Social  Aims ^  and  other  works.  In  addition  to  his  wri- 
tings he  very  often  delivered  popular  lectures.  In  this 
respect  he  has  had  many  imitators,  who  have  lectured 
on  innumerable  subjects  to  audiences  in  nearly  all 
portions  of  the  Union.  These  have  been  very  influ- 
ential in  encouraging  the  formation  of  literary  associ- 
ations in  numerous  villages  and  towns  of  the  country. 

George  William  Curtis  (1824 — 1892)  was  the 
author  of  The  Fotiphar  Papers — a  satire  on  social  life 
— and  Trumps^  a  novel.  As  editor  his  essays  on  cur- 
rent topics  were  very  popular  and  instructive,  while 
his  criticisms  were  just  and  judicious.  He  is  noted 
for  his  graceful  style.  Edwin  Percy  Whipple,  in  the 
main,  may  be  termed  an  essayist.  He  also  wrote 
much  in  review  of  books.  Henry  D.  Thoreau,  a  re- 
cluse, who  lived  on  a  small  lake  near  Concord,  Mass., 
wrote  several  works.     Walden  is  reckoned  his  best. 

20.  Later  Novelists. — Nathaniel  Haw- 
thorne (1804 — 1864)  holds  the  first  place  in  the 
ranks  of  American  writers  of  fiction.  He  is  most 
fascinating,  possessing  delicacy  of  taste  and  finish 
of  style,  combined  with  an  insight  into  the  human 
mind  most  remarkable.  He  wrote  many  stories  illus- 
trating character,  the  subjects  being  taken  from  New 
England  life  at  different  periods,  and  also  others 
based  on  foreign  topics — among  these,  The  House 
of  the  Seven  Gables^  The  Scarlet  Letter^  Twice-told 
TaleSj  and  others.  His  last  work,  The  Marble  Faun, 
is  deemed  by  some  his  best. 

William  Gilmore  Simms  (1806 — 1870),  of  South 
Carolina,  wrote  several  novels,  as  well  as  poems ;  but 
by  no  means  limited  to  these,  as  he  was  an  indefat- 
igable worker,  writing  for  magazines,  and  biogra- 
phies, and  histories.  His  chief  novels  are  Yemassee 
and  the  Partisan.  He  also  wrote  a  History  of  South 
Carolina. 

Harriet  Beecher  Stowe,  in  her  Uncle  TonCs 
Cabifiy  occupied  comparatively  a  new  field — the  anti- 


200  AMERICAN  LITERA  TURE.  [chap. 

slavery.  It  was  written  for  a  purpose,  and  is  by  far 
the  most  popular  American  novel  ever  published, 
judging  from  its  immense  sale.  Her  subsequent 
works  have  been  superior  as  to  their  literary  mer- 
its— among  these  are  The  Minister  s  Wooing,  Oldtown 
Folks,  Woman  in  Sacred  History,  We  and  our  Neigh- 
bours^ The  Foganuc  People,  and  others. 

21.  Poets  of  the  Present. — Among  the  po- 
ets of  the  present  is  Richard  Henry  Stoddard. 
Though  engaged  in  business  duties,  he  has  diligent- 
ly devoted  his  leisure  hours  to  poetry  and  general 
literature,  having  edited  several  collections  of  poetry. 
His  pieces  are  generally  short,  The  Hymn  to  the 
Beautiful  being  among  the  first  he  published. 

Edmund  Clarence  Stedman  has  written  much 
lyric  poetry.  He  wrote  a  social  satire — The  Diamond 
Wedding — Alice  of  Monmouth,  and  many  other  pieces. 
His  review  of  the  contemporary  poets  of  England,  in 
his  Victorian  Poets,  has  placed  him  in  the  first  rank 
of  appreciative  and  just  critics. 

The  Civil  War  was  the  occasion  of  much  song- 
writing,  some  of  which  will  remain  as  specimens  of 
spirited  composition,  such  as  Sheridan  s  Ride,  by  T. 
Buchanan  Read,  and  the  Battle  Hymn  of  the  Re- 
public, by  Julia  Ward  Howe. 

Of  those  who  have  been  successful  in  writing 
both  prose  and  poetry  in  a  popular  manner,  per- 
haps Bayard  Taylor  is  the  most  striking  example. 
His  first  book — commenced  in  his  twentieth  year — 
Views  Afoot,  is  a  graphic  description  of  his  travels 
"  on  foot "  during  two  years  in  the  countries  of  Eu- 
rope. To  this  were  added  some  eight  or  nine  other 
books,  some  of  travel  and  others  of  story.  He  com- 
posed his  poems  with  astonishing  rapidity.  He  died 
while  the  American  Minister  at  the  court  of  Berlin. 

Joaquin  Miller  and  Francis  Bret  Harte  have 
sung  of  the  wild  scenes  of  California  in  its  ear- 
lier  days.     The   descriptions  of  the   manners  and 


IX.]  FROM  1647    TO   1895.  201 

customs  of  the  miners  of  those  times  have  thrown 
around  their  writings  the  charm  of  novelty.  The 
former's  first  efforts  were  the  Songs  of  the  Sierras^ 
and  the  Heathen  Chinee  of  the  latter  had  perhaps 
more  readers  than  any  other  poem  of  the  time.  Both 
have  written  short  stories  successfully,  and  Harte 
one  or  two  novels,  as  Gabriel  Conroy^  and  a  drama, 
Two  Men  of  Sandy  Bar^  and  Condensed  Novels, 

John  Godfrey  Saxe,  as  a  poet,  was  peculiar  and 
successful  in  travesties  and  witty  combinations  of 
thoughts  and  fancies,  which  flow  spontaneously,  but 
are  so  apt  and  to  the  point  that  they  are  appreciated 
without  an  effort  by  the  reader.  For  this  reason  he 
is  one  of  the  most  pleasing  of  our  poets  who  have 
been  characterized  as  humorous. 

22.  Novels  and  Poetry. — John  Hay,  a  native 
of  Indiana,  wrote  Jim  Bludso,  describing  an  original 
character  in  an  original  manner ;  and  many  other 
poems  deemed  equally  striking.  He  has  been  com- 
plimented by  having  many  imitators.  He  also  wrote 
Castilian  Days,  a  series  of  Spanish  sketches. 
^  Thomas  Bailey  Aldrich,  for  several  years  editor 
of  the  Atlantic  Monthly,  has  won  a  reputation  as  a 
poet  and  novelist.  From  his  first  ballad,  Baby  Bell, 
and  novel.  Prudence  Palfrey,  to  his  latest  story,  The 
Old  Town  by  the  Sea,  is  found  the  same  care  in  the 
style,  and  the  same  twinkling  humor. 

JosiAH  Gilbert  Holland  was  the  author  of 
many  novels,  the  scenes  of  which  are  drawn  from 
American  domestic  life,  as  The  Story  of  Sevenoaks, 
Arthur  Bonnicastle,  and  Nicholas  Minturn.  As  the 
editor  of  an  influential  magazine  he  exerted  a  power, 
for  in  his  comments  on  current  topics  he  was  as  free 
as  he  was  fearless. 

Edward  Eggleston,  a  native  of  Indiana,  has 
taken  a  high  rank  as  a  writer.  He  has  the  advan- 
tage of  throwing  an  interest  around  a  class  of  sub- 
jects and  state  of  society  three-fourths  of  a  century 


202  AMERICAN  LITERATURE,  [chap. 

ago,  on  the  frontier,  that  was  unexplored.  His 
Hoosier  Schoolmaster  and  Circuit  Rider  attracted  at- 
tention ;  nor  has  the  interest  in  his  subsequent 
stories  flagged.  These  novels,  from  the  vivid  pres- 
entation of  their  characters  and  the  novelty  of  the 
scenes  described,  have  been  popular  in  England,  and, 
it  is  said,  with  German  readers.  It  is  in  the  depart- 
ment of  history,  however,  that  we  must  look  for  Mr. 
Eggleston's  best  and  most  enduring  contributions  to 
our  literature.  His  delineations  of  early  life  and 
manners  in  America  are  remarkable  for  their  accu- 
racy and  their  charming  interest. 

William  Dean  Howells,  a  native  of  Ohio,  has 
derived  many  of  his  scenes  from  American  life  as 
found  among  the  well-to-do  and  intelligent  classes. 
He  is  remarkable  for  the  finish  of  his  style  and  its 
easy  flow,  and  the  delicate  manner  in  which  he  de- 
lineates scenes  that  every  one  in  the  same  state  of 
society  recognizes  as  true  to  nature.  Their  Wedding 
Journey^  Venetian  Life,  A  Modern  Instance,  and  many 
other  books,  are  among  his  writings.  As  an  editor 
he  has  been  equally  successful,  while  the  moral  tone 
of  his  writings  is  elevating. 

Two  authors — Julian  Hawthorne  and  Henry 
James,  Jr. — bid  fair  as  writers  to  sustain  the  reputa- 
tions of  their  fathers.  Both  are  careful  and  consci- 
entious in  their  works,  and  compose  them  with  liter- 
ary skill.  Hawthorne  has  written  Garth  and  other 
stories,  also  Saxon  Studies ;  and  James,  Watch  and 
Ward,  The  American,  The  Europeans,  Daisy  Miller, 
The  Bostonians,  and  others.  Both  are  frequent  con- 
tributors to  American  periodicals. 

Edward  Everett  Hale  is  the  author  of  numer- 
ous stories,  marked  by  the  excellence  of  their  plots 
and  style.  A  Man  without  a  Country  exerted  a  good 
influence  in  favor  of  the  Union  in  the  time  of  the 
Civil  War.  He  also  wrote  Philip  Nolan's  Friends^ 
and  A  New  England  Boyhood, 


IX.]  FROM  1647    TO   1895.  203 

Thomas  Wentworth  Higginson  has  treated 
of  home  scenes  in  his  Out-door  Papers^  and  other 
sketches.  He  has  also  written  Atlantic  Essays  and 
a  Young  Folks'  History  of  the  United  States.  His  later 
works  include  two  or  three  volumes  of  essays  on 
social  and  educational  topics. 

Charles  Dudley  Warner  is  a  remarkably  pleas- 
ing writer.  Like  the  red  thread  in  the  British  naval 
cordage,  an  unconscious  humor  runs  through  all 
his  writings  ;  this  makes  them  very  attractive.  His 
My  Summer  in  a  Garden  and  Back-Log  Studies  were 
received  with  great  favor.  These  were  followed 
by  others,  such  as  sketches  of  travels  on  this  con- 
tinent and  in  the  East.  He  enters  fully  into  the 
boys*  life  in  his  Being  a  Boy.  Among  his  latest 
works  is  a  collection  of  delightful  essays  entitled 
As  we  go. 

53.  Female  Writers. — Space  suggests  only  a 
mention  of  the  progress  in  poetry  by  a  host  of  female 
writers,  as  at  present  the  great  majority  of  poems 
written  are  by  women.  These  are  found  in  the 
newspapers  and  periodicals,  and  we  hail  them  as 
harbingers  of  a  bright  future.  Women  also  furnish, 
almost  without  number,  short  and  graceful  stories, 
the  moral  influence  of  which  is  excellent.  This  is 
their  field  ;  that  of  history  has  been  occupied,  if  not 
quite  exhausted ;  the  scientific  appropriately  belongs 
to  those  who  have  qualified  themselves  by  the  labori- 
ous study  of  years.  Woman  may  revel  occasionally 
in  theoretical  speculations,  but  to  her  sympathetic 
nature  and  quick  perceptions  properly  belong  the 
delineations  of  character  as  found  in  domestic  and 
social  life  ;  and  here  she  has  an  opportunity  of  doing 
good,  and  by  her  influence  raising  the  standard  of 
correct  thought  and  literary  excellence. 

Mrs.  Adeline  D.  T.  Whitney  is  happy  in  delin- 
eating girlhood,  as  in  her  Leslie  Goldthwaiie.  This 
has  been  followed  by  other  stories  in  the  same  strain, 
18 


204  AMERICAN  LITERA  TURE.  [chap. 

and  all  of  a  high  moral  tone,  such  as  Real  Folks, 
Faith  Gartnefs  Girlhood,  and  Sights  and  Insights. 

Louisa  May  Alcott  as  an  author  of  juvenile 
books  was  remarkably  popular  and  successful.  While 
perfectly  at  home  in  this  class  of  writing, there  seemed 
to  be  lurking  in  her  mind  a  power  that  might  one  day 
assert  itself  still  more.  Her  Little  Women  was  by  no 
means  confined  in  its  great  popularity  to  juveniles. 

Elizabeth  Stuart  Phelps  Ward  stands  forth 
alone,  displaying  an  unusual  power.  She  has  pub- 
lished a  number  of  books,  all  stamped  with  an  origi- 
nality of  thought  and  forms  of  expression ;  among 
these  The  Gates  Ajar  attracted  at  one  time  much  at- 
tention ;  but  by  far  her  most  powerful  story  is  Avis, 
describing  the  struggles  of  a  noble  woman. 

Mrs.  Harriet  Prescott  Spofford  is  the  author 
of  several  novels  of  high  character  on  account  of  the 
style  in  which  they  are  written,  such  as  Sir  Rohan  s 
Ghost  and  New  England  Legends. 

Mrs.  Frances  Hodgson  Burnett  wrote  the 
story  That  Lass  <?'  Lowrie's,  Though  having  written 
previously  a  number  of  short  and  pleasant  stories, 
this  book  attracted  unusual  attention  as  an  earnest 
of  what  the  author  could  do.  Her  recent  stories  are 
The  Haworths  and  Little  Saint  Elizabeth, 

24.  Fiction  for  a  Purpose.— There  is  another 
branch  of  literature  worthy  of  notice,  not  only  for  its 
excellence  in  its  sphere,  but  for  its  good  moral  influ- 
ence— that  of  books  in  the  form  of  fiction  to  incul- 
cate proper  religious  sentiment ;  among  these  writers 
Edward  Payson  Roe  is  prominent,  whose  various 
novels  have  attained  a  decided  popularity.  He  has 
written  Barriers  Burned  Away,  The  Knight  of  the  Nine- 
teenth Century,  Without  a  Home,  and  many  others. 

Mrs.  Elizabeth  Prentiss,  with  pure  Christian 
love,  cultivated  this  field  for  a  number  of  years,  and 
led  many  "  stepping  heavenward."  She  was  the  au- 
thor of  numerous  books  for  children  and  youth,  and 


IX.]  FROM  1647    TO  1895.  205 

Others  of  a  more  advanced  grade.  Stepping  Heaven- 
ward has  been  her  mc^t  useful  book,  having  great 
popularity  both  in  this  country  and  in  England. 
Having  been  translated  into  German  and  French,  it 
is  read  much  upon  the  Contment. 

The  sisters  Susan  and  Anna  Warner  have  also 
hibored  successfully.  Commencing  with  The  Wide, 
Wide  World,  they  have  continued  to  write  many 
others. 

Nor  should  we  neglect  to  notice  the .  literature 
that  has  grown  up  within  the  last  third  of  a  century, 
among  all  denominations  of  Christians,  known  as 
Sunday-school,  and  the  continuation  of  the  same  in 
moral  stories  for  youth  more  advanced. 

25.  Theological  and  Biblical  Writers. — In 
theology  and  Biblical  learning  American  scholars 
have  taken  a  high  position.  Professor  Charles 
Hodge,  of  the  Presbyterian  Seminary  at  Princeton, 
published  the  Systematic  Theology — the  labor  of  half 
a  century — a  work  matured  and  sent  forth  without 
an  equal. 

Professor  Edward  Robinson,  of  the  Union  The- 
ological Seminary,  New  York  City,  published  the 
Biblical  Researches,  the  result  of  two  personal  visits 
to  the  Holy  Land,  and  an  examination,  more  thor- 
ough than  ever  before,  of  its  antiquities,  and  of  the 
places  mentioned  in  the  Bible.  This  became  at 
once  a  standard  work.  It  turned  the  attention  of 
the  religious  world  still  more  to  the  subjects  of  Bibli- 
cal interpretation. 

In  this  department  Professor  Addison  Alexan- 
der, of  Princeton,  stands  among  the  first.  Rev 
Albert  Barnes  also  wrote  expositions  on  many 
books  of  the  Scriptures,  especially  designed  to  aid 
those  instructing  others.  Dr.  Phillip  Schaff  has 
accomplished  much  for  the  cause  in  editing  Lange's 
Commentary  on  the  whole  Bible.  Professor  W.  G.  T. 
Shedd  wrote  a  History  of  Christian  Doctrine. 


2o6  AMERICAN  LITERATURE,  [chap. 

In  other  departments  collateral  with  Biblical 
learning,  Professor  Tayler  Lewis,  of  Union  Col- 
lege, wrote  Science  and  the  Bible ;  President  James 
McCosH,  of  Princeton,  has  written  The  Laws  of 
Discursive  Thought  and  Christianity  and  Positivism  ; 
President  Mark  Hopkins,  oi  Williams,  Evidences 
of  Christianity  and  The  Law  of  Love ;  President 
Francis  Wayland,  of  Brown  University,  wrote 
Moral  Science ;  Dr.  William  R.  Alger  wrote  the 
History  of  the  Doctrine  of  the  Future  Life ;  Dr. 
Andrew  P.  Peabody,  on  Christianity  and  Science ; 
Professor  Thomas  C.  Upham,  of  Bowdoin,  published 
the  Elements  of  Mental  Philosophy  j  and  President 
Noah  Porter,  of  Yale,  an  elaborate  work  on  The 
Human  Lntellect, 

26.  Church  Histories. — Dr.  Abel  Stevens  has 
written  a  full  History  of  the  Methodist  Church  ;  Pro- 
fessor Charles  Hodge  and  Dr.  E.  H.  Gillett  a 
History  of  the  Presbyterian  Churchy  the  latter  also 
wrote  a  standard  work  on  the  LJfe  and  Times  of  John 
Huss  ;  Dr.  Henry  M.  Dexter  has  written  the  His- 
tory of  Congregationalism;  Rev.  Dr.  Perry,  Bishop 
of  Iowa,  a  History  of  the  Episcopalians  j  and  Dr.  Rob- 
ert Baird,  Religion  in  America. 

27.  Jurisprudence. — Chancellor  James  Kent 
wrote  Commentaries  on  American  Law  ;  Justice  Joseph 
Story,  on  the  Constitution  of  the  United  States  j  Pro- 
fessor Henry  Wheaton,  on  Lnternational  Law  ;  ex- 
President  Theodore  D.  Woolsey  has  also  written 
0:1  International  Law.  These  works  are  all  standard 
on  the  subjects  of  which  they  treat. 

28.  Other  Authors.  —  Edgar  Allan  Poe 
holds  a  peculiar  place  in  our  literature.  A  man  of 
melancholy  temperament,  and  leading  a  sad  and 
wayward  life,  yet  his  poetry  was  so  original  in  its 
construction,  and  so  melodious  in  its  rhythm,  as  to 
induce  many  in  that  respect  to  imitate  him.  He 
is  best  known  by  his  poem  The  Raven,      Richard 


IX.]  FROM  1647    rO  1895.  207 

H.  Dana  wrote  both  poetry  and  prose ;  of  the  for^ 
mer,  The  Buccaneer  is  deemed  his  best.  Nathaniel 
Parker  Willis  wrote  a  number  of  poems  on  scrip- 
tural subjects;  these  are  deemed  by  many  the  best 
he  has  written.  Paul  H,  Hayne,  of  Georgia,  and 
Henry  Timrod,  of  South  Carolina,  are  noted — the 
former  as  a  sonneteer,  the  latter  for  his  war-songSc 
George  Ticknor  wrote  a  standard  work  on  Span- 
ish literature,  and  biographies.  George  S.  Hil- 
LARD  is  noted  for  the  refined  taste,  purity  of  style, 
and  high-toned  moral  sentiment  in  his  writings  which 
<  onsist  mainly  of  orations,  discourses,  or  essays. 

In  every  department  of  knowledge  we  have 
th.^  writings  of  numerous  authors  of  ability  and 
discmction.  Among  the  best  general  works  on 
scientific  subjects  are  those  of  Joseph  Henry,  of 
the  Smithsonian  Institution,  John  W.  Draper, 
Louis  Agassiz,  Noah  Porter,  Edward  L.  You- 
MANS,  President  Jordan,  of  the  Leland  Stanford 
Jr.  University,  and  Spencer  F.  Baird  ;  among 
those  on  philology  are  the  works  of  William 
Dwight  Whitney,  George  P.  Marsh,  and  S.  S. 
Halderman.  Among  the  foremost  writers  on 
political  economy  we  may  mention  Dr.  Francis 
Wayland,  Henry  C.  Carey,  Professor  Perry,  of 
Williams  College,  Richard  T.  Ely,  of  Johns  Hop- 
kins University,  Theodore  Dwight  Woolsey, 
W.  G.  Sumner,  and  Edward  Atkinson;  among 
the  writers  on  geography  and  geology  are  Arnold 
GuYOT,  Matthew  F.  Maury,  Edward  Hitch- 
cock, James  Dwight  Dana,  Alexander  Win- 
CHELL,  John  S.  Newberry,  N.  S.  Shaler,  and 
Joseph  Le  Conte.  Asa  Gray  and  Joseph  Tor- 
REY  have  written  on  botany,  and  Simon  New- 
comb,  Henry  W.  Warren,  and  O.  M.  Mitchell 
on  astronomy. 


2o8  AMERICAN  LITERATURE.  [chap. 


CHAPTER   X. 
1647-1895. 

Section  29.  F.  M.  Crawford — his  Education — Experience  in 
India — his  Success.  30.  Lewis  Wallace — his  Books,  Ben^ 
Hur  and  Prince  of  Jndii — Will  Carleton — the  Flavor  of  his 
Writings.  31,  32.  Philosophy,  Psychology,  and  Biblical 
Theology — Names  of  Authors  :  Professors  McCosh — Ladd — 
Shields  —  Peabody —  Fisher — Schaff — Shedd  —  Vincent — 
Briggs.  33.  Creole  Folklore  :  G.  W.  Cable  -Grace  E.  King. 
34.  Two  Virginians — Mrs.  Chanler — Miss  Magruder.  35. 
Dialects  and  Illiteracy — Intelligent  Ancestors —The  Spirit 
of  Slavery  on  Education — W.  G.  Simms.  36,  37.  Miss 
Baylor's  Writings — Miss  McClelland's — Miss  ^lurfree's 
Vivid  Description  of  Natural  Scenery — Professor  Johnston 
— his  Sketches  of  *' Crackers."  38,  39.  Negro  Folklore — its 
Peculiarities  illustrated  by  Page  and  Harris — the  Outlook. 

29.  Franxis  Marion  Crawford  was  born  in 
Italy,  in  1854,  of  American  parents,  his  father 
being  Thomas  Crawford,  the  well-known  sculptor. 
It  is  the  privilege  of  only  a  few  to  receive  as  com- 
plete a  classical  and  general  education  as  did  Mr. 
Crawford.  He  obtained  it  under  favorable  condi- 
tions in  his  preparatory  and  collegiate  course  in 
the  United  States,  and  also  in  a  university  in  Eng- 
land. Thence  he  went  to  India,  to  study  its  people 
and  the  mysteries  of  their  religion  and  philosophy; 
the  outcome  was  his  first  book,  Mr.  Isaacs.  In 
this  he  delineated  a  peculiar  phase  of  the  singular 
society  in  that  country.  His  first  effort  was  very 
favorably  received  by  the  English-speaking  public 
everywhere.  Afterward,  in  nearly  the  same  line, 
though  the  scene  was  laid  in  ancient  times,  was 


X.]  FROM  1647    TO    1895  209 

written,  but  much  more  elaborately,  utie  story  of 
Zoroaster.  In  due  time  appeared  Dr.  Claudius.,  and 
other  volumes,  to  be  followed  by  Fietro  Ghesleri 
and  Katherine  Lauderdale. 

30.  Lewis  Wallace,  a  soldier,  lawyer,  and  dip- 
lomatist, was  born  in  the  State  of  Indiana,  in  1827. 
He  first  became  known  as  an  author  by  A  Fair 
God.  The  scene  of  the  story  was  laid  in  Mexico, 
and  the  effort  was  not  specially  successful.  He 
afterward  wrote  Fen-Hur,  a  Tale  of  the  Christ.,  which 
was  remarkably  popular.  The  opening  chapter  is 
one  of  the  most  striking  in  the  language,  and  the 
entire  volume  is  replete  with  scenes  graphically 
depicted.  Mr.  Wallace  was  American  Minister  at 
Constantinople  (1881 — 1885).  In  1893  was  pub- 
lished his  Friiice  of  India^  perhaps  the  outgrowth 
of  study  while  at  the  court  of  the  Sultan.  The 
Frince  of  India  has  numerous  vivid  scenes  drawn 
incidentally  from  the  history  of  early  Christian 
times,  as  it  is  a  phase  of  the  imaginary  life  of  the 
Wandering  Jew. 

William  M. — but  known  to  the  reader  as  sim- 
ply Will — Carleton  was  born  in  Michigan,  in 
1845.  His  poems  on  domestic  life  in  descriptions 
are  graphic  and  true  to  Nature  for  illustration  in 
Fetsey  and  I  are  out.  The  same  characteristics  be- 
long to  his  Farm  Fallads,  and  even  to  his  City 
Legends.  There  is  a  refreshing  flavor  about  his 
writings,  and  though  the  reader  may  not  be  indi- 
vidually familiar  with  such  scenes,  yet  there  is 
something  in  them  so  real  that  they  are  accepted 
as  true  and  read  with  a  zest. 

31.  Philosophy,  Psychology,  and  Biblical 
Theology. — Within  recent  years  these  respective 
fields  of  thought  have  been  cultivated  assiduously 
by  a  number  of  authors  whose  writings,  because 
of  their  merits,  have  become  standard. 

Ex-President  James  McCosh,  of  Princeton  Uni- 


210  AMERICAN  LITERATURE.  [chap. 

versity,  wrote  First  and  Fundamental  Truths^  Psy- 
chology (2  vols.) — the  cognitive  and  motive  powers, 
The  Emotions^  Our  Moral  Nature^  The  Method  of 
Divine  Governynent^  The  Religious  Aspect  of  Evolu- 
tion^ Realistic  Philosophy  (2  vols.). 

Professor  George  Trumbull  Ladd,  of  Yale 
University,  wrote  an  Introduction  to  Philosophy^  Ele- 
ments of  Physiological  Psychology^  The  Doctrine  of 
Sacred  Scripture^  Psychology — descriptive  and  ex- 
planatory. 

Professor  Charles  W.  Shields,  of  Princeton 
University,  is  the  author  of  Philosophia  Ultima^  or 
Science  of  the  Sciences  (2  vols.),  Religion  and  Science 
in  their  Relations  to  Philosophy.  To  these  may  be 
added  an  admirable  treatise  entitled  Christianity 
and  Science^  by  the  late  Dr.  Andrew  P.  Peabody, 
professor  in  Harvard  University. 

Professor  George  Park  Fisher,  of  Yale  Uni- 
versity, wrote  The  Nature  and  Method  of  Revelation., 
History  of  the  Christian  Church.,  The  Grounds  of 
Theistic  and  Christian  Beliefs  The  Beginnings  of 
Christianity,  Super?iatural  Origin  of  Christianity,  Out- 
lines of  Universal  History  (2  vols.). 

32.  The  late  Professor  Philip  Schaff,  of  Union 
Theological  Seminary,  New  York,  though  a  native 
of  Switzerland,  has  long  been  an  American  by  adop- 
tion. Among  other  books  he  wrote  a  History  of  the 
Christian  Church,  Apostolic  Christianity,  A.  D.  i-ioo  ; 
Christ  and  Christianity,  or  Creeds  and  Confessions, 
Theological  Propcedeutic,  an  introduction  to  the  study 
of  theology  (1893). 

Professor  William  G.  T.  Shedd,  of  the  Union 
Theological  Seminary,  is  the  author  of  Dogmatic 
Theology  (2  vols.),  Orthodoxy  and  Heterodoxy,  A 
Treatise  on  Homiletics  and  Pastoral  Theology,  The 
Doctrine  of  Endless  Punishment,  Calvinisin,  Pure  and 
Mixed. 

Professor  Marvin  R.  Vincent,  of  the  Union 


X.]  FROM  1647    TO   1895.  211 

Theological  Seminary,  is  the  author  of  Word  Studies 
in  the  New  Testament  (3  vols.),  Gates  into  the  Psalm 
Country^  Faith  and  Character. 

Professor  Charles  A.  Briggs,  of  the  Union 
Theological  Seminary,  wrote  The  Higher  Criticism 
of  the  Hexateuch^  American  Presbyterianism^  Biblical 
Study^  Messianic  Prophecy^  The  Prediction  of  the 
■Fulfilment  of  Redemption  through  the  Messiah^  The 
Authority  of  Holy  Scripture. 

'^2i'  Creole  Folklore. — George  Washington 
Cable — his  father  a  Virginian  and  his  mother  a 
native  of  New  England — spent  nearly  all  his  early 
manhood  in  the  city  of  New  Orleans.  Naturally 
a  close  observer,  he  became  familiar  with  the  pe- 
culiar customs  and  language  of  that  portion  of  the 
population  known  as  French  "  Creole.  "  He  com- 
menced his  literary  career  by  publishing  a  series 
of  short  stories  descriptive  of  that  class.  These 
he  afterward  published  in  a  collected  form  under 
the  title  of  Old  Creole  Days.  At  this  time,  he  was 
engaged  in  mercantile  affairs,  but  meanwhile  was 
an  indefatigable  student  of  the  classics,  of  mathe- 
matics, and  of  Bible  history  and  truths.  His  short 
stories,  made  the  more  interesting  by  interspersed 
phrases  of  the  peculiar  dialect  of  this  class,  at- 
tracted much  attention,  and  prepared  the  reading 
public  to  receive  very  cordially  his  first  complete 
work.  The  Grandissimes.  This  was  followed  by  the 
story  of  Madame  Delphine,  which  has  been  de- 
scribed as  "  pathetic,  and  almost  tragic."  In  Dr. 
Sevier^  he  treats  of  social  life  in  New  Orleans  be- 
fore and  during  the  Civil  War;  then,  afterward,  of 
that  sad  episode  in  American  history.  The  Acadians 
of  Louisiana  (see  Four  Hundred  Years  of  American 
History,  pp.  287-292),  and  Strange  True  Stories  of 
Louisiana.  His  delineations  are  so  true  to  nature 
that  the  reader  is  unconsciously  allured  into  sym- 
pathy with  his  characters. 


212  AMERICAN  LITERATURE.  [chap. 

Miss  Grace  Elizabeth  King  is  a  native  of 
New  Orleans.  Her  education  was  obtained  chiefly 
in  the  schools  for  young  ladies  in  that  city,  but  it 
was  specially  superintended  by  her  father,  a  gen- 
tleman of  culture  and  an  eminent  member  of  the 
bar  of  Louisiana.  She  wrote  for  her  own  amuse- 
ment, her  first  book  being  Monsieur  Motte.  In 
this  story  was  portrayed  in  graphic  language  an 
incident  of  the  self-denying  care  of  a  negress  for  a 
white  child,  an  orphan  and  destitute.  The  manu- 
script of  this  story  happened  to  be  read  by  literary 
friends,  who  appreciated  its  worth,  and  through 
such  mfluence  it  was  published,  and  was  received 
most  cordially  by  the  reading  public.  This  appro- 
bation encouraged  further  illustration  of  the  gen- 
eral theme  in  her  third  story,  Madame  Lauveilliere. 
These  delineations  show  that  the  writer  under- 
stands her  subjects  and  is  able  to  describe  them 
vividly.  These  characteristics  of  a  portion  of  the 
population  of  her  native  city  were  a  revelation  to 
the  outside  public,  and  took  by  surprise  multi- 
tudes of  readers.  Her  graceful  style  charmed 
them,  while  the  presentation  of  her  themes  was 
with  great  clearness,  and  often  interspersed  with  a 
pleasing  humor. 

34.  Two  Virginians. — Mrs.  Chanler  {nee 
Amelie  Rives)  is  a  native  of  Richmond,  Virginia. 
She  belongs  to  a  family  noted  in  literary  and  po- 
litical circles,  being  a  granddaughter  of  United 
States  Senator  William  C.  Rives,  who  was  also  a 
journalist.  Her  education  was  desultory  rather 
than  systematic;  this  circumstance  may  account 
for  the  weirdness  of  some  of  her  writings.  Her 
first  published  effort,  A  Brother  to  Dragons^ 
which  at  once  attracted  much  attention,  is  of 
this  character.  Among  other  stories  she  has 
written  are  Virginia  of  Virginia,  Herod  and  Mari- 
amne^  and    Tanis   the   Sang-Digger,      She    appears 


X.]  FROM  1647    TO   1895.  213 

to  think  out  her  subject,  and  then  in  a  remark- 
ably rapid  manner  commits  her  thoughts  to  writ- 
ing. 

Another  native  of  Virginia,  Miss  Julia  Magru- 
DER,  deserves  notice.  She  is  known  to  the  literary 
world  by  her  production,  Across  the  Chas?n.  This 
is  a  delineation  of  certain  traits  of  character  which 
are  found  when  contrasting  types  of  society  South 
and  North.  One  of  her  latest  books  is  The  Mag- 
nificent Plebeian.  Miss  Magruder  appears  to  be 
well  acquainted  with  society  as  seen  in  the  cities 
of  Baltimore  and  Washington,  in  which  by  turns 
she  has  been  a  temporary  resident  for  a  number  of 
years,  though  her  home  is  near  Winchester,  in  her 
native  State.  There  is  a  pleasant  vein  of  humor 
running  through  her  writings  that  aids  in  makmg 
them  attractive. 

35.  Dialects  and  Illiteracy. — We  now  notice 
conditions  that  in  a  certain  portion  of  the  Union 
have  given  rise  to  a  peculiar  phase  of  our  litera- 
ture. We  allude  to  the  mountainous  regions  of 
Virginia,  North  Carolina,  Georgia,  and  Tennessee. 
It  is  a  sad  reflection  that  so  much  illiteracy 
abounds  among  the  descendants  of  the  original 
colonists  who  founded  settlements  amid  the  beauti- 
ful mountains  and  in  the  pleasant  valleys  of  this 
region.  The  ancestors  of  these  people  were  for  the 
most  part  of  Scotch-Irish  origin;  this  fact  is  de- 
tected in  the  names  of  their  descendants.  In  re- 
spect to  religious  belief  they  were  nearly  all  Pres- 
byterians. More  than  one  hundred  and  twenty 
years  ago  these  "  plain  people  "  were  so  intelligent 
as  to  choose  as  their  representatives  the  statesmen, 
who  met  in  May,  1775,  in  the  famous  Mecklenburg 
Convention,  and,  there  proclaiming  their  independ- 
ence, repudiated  their  allegiance  to  the  British 
crown. 

Soon  after  we  became  a  nation  the  slavehold- 


214  AMERICAN  LITERA  TURE,  [chap. 

ing  element  in  the  South  received  a  new  accession 
of  strength  through  the  invention  of  the  cotton- 
gin.  Great  cotton  plantations  were  established  in 
the  valleys  and  plains,  gradually  occupying  all  the 
more  fertile  regions,  and  obliging  the  smaller  land- 
holders who  cultivated  their  own  farms  to  sell  out 
and  find  new  homes  among  the  comparatively 
barren  hills  and  mountains.  For  more  than  three 
generations  none  of  these  unfortunate  people,  stig- 
matized as  ''crackers,"  '' tarheels,"  "white  trash," 
or  ''  poor  whites,"  were  sent  to  Congress  or  to  the 
Legislatures  of  their  respective  States;  and,  as  no 
provision  was  made  for  the  education  of  all  the 
children  by  means  of  public  schools,  illiteracy  and 
ignorance  increased  among  them,  and  their  lan- 
guage degenerated  into  a  dialect.  Had  there  been 
a  general  system  of  free  schools  in  these  regions, 
the  language  of  the  public-school  book,  of  the 
newspaper,  of  the  pulpit,  or  of  the  lecture-platform 
would  have  been  everywhere  the  same,  and  dia- 
lects would  have  been  unknown.  Outside  the  for- 
eign element,  dialects  henceforth  cannot  increase 
in  the  United  States,  since  all  the  youth  will  be 
taught  the  same  language  in  the  public  schools. 
There  is  a  reason  for  dialects  among  the  Creoles 
of  Louisiana  and  among  the  freedmen,  but  no  ex- 
cuse whatever  for  those  in  the  regions  just  noted, 
except  the  unpardonable  neglect  of  the  former 
rulers  in  these  States  to  make  adequate  provision 
for  the  education  of  all  the  people.  It  will  take 
at  least  two  generations  of  general  instruction  and 
public  schools  to  eliminate  the  evil. 

William  Gilmore  Simms  in  substance  once 
said*:  "  Under  a  slaveholding  aristocracy  there 
cannot  be  a  Southern  literature.  We  hope,  and  in 
due  time  expect,  our  literature  to  be  American- 
national,  not  sectional."  It  appears  that  the  latter 
phase  of    the  subject  has  already  made  progress 


X.]  FROM  1647    TO   1895.  215 

toward  such  realization,  for  since  the  extinction  of 
slavery  an  unusual  number  of  both  se::es  south  of 
the  line  of  Mason  and  Dixon  have  come  to  the 
front.  It  is  still  more  cheering  that  they  have 
been  hailed  with  unfeigned  pleasure  by  intelligent 
readers  throughout  the  Union.  The  number  of 
these  writers,  thus  far,  has  been  about  equally  di- 
vided between  the  sexes. 

36.  Miss  Frances  Courtney  Baylor,  though 
a  native  of  Arkansas,  and  for  a  short  time  a  resi- 
dent of  Texas,  is  virtually  a  Virginian,  since  in  the 
latter  State  her  family  in  its  social  standing  was 
one  of  note.  After  the  close  of  the  Civil  War  she 
visited  Europe,  and  spent  some  years  chiefly  in 
England,  then  returned  to  the  United  States,  and 
made  her  home  in  the  beautiful  valley  of  the  Shenan- 
doah, in  the  vicinity  of  Winchester.  Here  appeared 
her  first  book.  On  Both  Sides,  the  main  point  of 
which  was  the  contrast  in  the  experiences  of  a  com- 
pany of  Americans  of  diversified  types  living  for  a 
time  in  England,  with  the  adventures  of  a  party  of 
English  travelling  in  the  United  States.  She  also 
wrote  Shocking  Sample  and  Beyond  the  Mountains. 
Miss  Baylor's  style  is  remarkably  clear  and  grace- 
ful, and  often  enlivened  by  witty  suggestions  or 
remarks. 

Miss  Mary  Greenwood  McClelland,  a  na- 
tive of  Nelson  County,  Virginia,  wrote  Olivion,  a 
story  of  the  mountaineers  of  that  State.  In  this 
book,  with  clever  tact  and  delicacy,  is  described  the 
daily  life  of  these  simple  people,  but  in  terms  wom- 
anly and  charming.  From  childhood  romantic  in 
disposition,  her  active  mind,  though  having  no  child 
playmates,  and  removed  from  cities  and  much  social 
intercourse,  lived  in  a  world  of  romance,  with  the 
characters  in  Walter  Scott's  novels  as  companions. 
Miss  McClelland  is  said  to  have  never  spent  a  day 
in  school,  but  was,  however,  indefatigable  in  pur- 
19 


2i6  AMERICAN  LITERATURE.  [chap 

suing  a  systematic  course  of  study.  She  wrote  The 
Princess  and  The  Self-made  Man.  At  present  her 
latest  book  is  Ten  Minutes  to  Twelve. 

37.  The  literary  world  was  delighted  with  a 
book  issued  under  the  title  Where  the  Battle  was 
Fought^  as  it  was  filled  with  graphic  descriptions. 
It  was  fought  on  the  homestead  farm  where  Miss 
Mary  Noailles  Murfree  was  born,  and  near  the 
village  of  Murfreesboro,  which  was  founded  by 
her  paternal  grandfather,  Major  Hardy  Murfree, 
and  named  in  his  honor.  The  major  had  done 
good  service  in  the  Revolutionary  War,  which  was 
recognized  by  the  United  States  in  bestowing  upon 
him  a  large  grant  of  public  land  in  Tennessee. 
Thither  he  removed  from  North  Carolina, 

Miss  Murfree  published  her  books  under  the  as- 
sumed name  "  Charles  Egbert  Craddock,"  which 
name  as  an  author  she  retains.  Their  home  near 
Murfreesboro  being  broken  up  by  the  war,  the 
family  retired  to  their  summer  residence,  known 
as  "  Murfree's  Rock,"  a  cottage  built  on  a  crag  m 
the  Tennessee  mountains,  and  in  the  vicinity  of 
Beersheba,  a  watering-place  of  a  local  reputation. 
From  the  piazza  of  this  cottage  is  a  magnificent 
prospect  of  mountains  and  intervening  vales.  Miss 
Murfree  appreciated  their  beauties,  and  her  mind 
became  so  imbued  with  impressions  received,  that 
in  writing  she  seems  unconsciously  to  revel  in  de- 
scriptions of  natural  scenery.  Unfortunately,  when 
a  child  a  stroke  of  paralysis  rendered  her  unable 
to  walk,  and  as  she  could  not  ramble  in  the  moun- 
tains, perhaps  ''  distance  lent  enchantment  to  the 
view."  In  her  writings  is  manifested  a  vigorous  in- 
tellect. Miss  Murfree  has  also  written  The  Prophet 
of  the  Great  Smoky  Mountains^  I71  the  Clouds ,  In  the 
^''Stranger  People's''  Coimtij,  and  others. 

Richard  Malcolm  Johnston  was  born  March 
8,  1822,  in  Hancock  County,  Georgia,  his  ancestors 


X.]  FROM  1647    TO  1895.  j2i7 

having  migrated  thither  from  Virginia.  His  early 
education  was  limited  to  an  "  old  field  school,"  but 
when  the  family  removed  to  the  village  of  Powel- 
ton  he  was  able  to  attend  an  excellent  private 
school  established  by  Salem  Town,  a  native  of 
Massachusetts.  After  graduation  at  Mercer  Col- 
lege, and  teaching  for  a  time,  he  prepared  himself 
for  the  bar  and  soon  rose  to  eminence,  and  was 
appointed  to  a  judgeship,  which  office  he  declined, 
but  accepted  a  professorship  of  belles-lettres  in  the 
University  of  Georgia,  to  which  in  the  meantime 
he  had  been  elected. 

Previous  to  this.  Professor  Johnston  had  ac- 
quired a  literary  reputation  by  means  of  a  number 
of  stories  in  which  were  sketched  to  the  life  the 
peculiar  characteristics  of  the  ''  crackers  "  of  his 
native  State.  The  first  of  these  series  was  The 
Dukesborough  Tales^  that  being  a  collection  of  stories. 
In  his  journeyings  through  a  number  of  counties 
as  a  practising  lawyer,  he  was  enabled  to  study  this 
phase  of  the  people  of  Georgia.  A  vein  of  pleas- 
ant but  not  unkind  humor  pervades  his  several 
writings.  He  published,  among  other  stories.  Old 
Mark  Langs  ton  and  The  Two  Gray  Tourists.  He 
also  labored  in  more  serious  work  in  writing  a 
History  of  English  Literature^  and  in  connection 
with  Professor  W.  H.  Browne,  of  Johns  Hopkins 
University,  he  wrote  A  Biography  of  Alexander  H. 
Stephens. 

38.  Negro  Folklore. — We  now  notice  two 
writers  who  by  their  graphic  stories  have  illustrated 
the  dialects  and  general  characteristics  of  the  negro, 
both  of  which  are  found  to  be  somewhat  unlike  in 
different  portions  of  the  South.  These  writers  are 
Thomas  Nelson  Page,  of  Virginia,  and  Joel 
Chandler  Harris,  of  Georgia.  The  former  was 
born  April  23,  1853,  at  Oaklands,  Hanover  County, 
Virginia;  the  latter,  December  9,  1848,  in  the  vil- 


2i8  AMERICAN  LITERATURE.  [chap. 

lage  of  Eatonton,  Putnam  County,  Georgia.  Page 
was  a  mere  child  when  the  Civil  War  commenced, 
and  his  home  happened  to  be  at  the  junction  of 
two  main  roads  leading  to  Richmond,  and  in  con- 
sequence it  was  passed  and  repassed  by  hostile 
armies.  During  these  troublous  times  his  educa- 
tion was  interrupted,  but  he  read  and  enjoyed  the 
Waverley  novels.  Meantime  the  exciting  and  pass- 
ing incidents  of  the  period  deeply  impressed  them- 
selves upon  the  boy's  mind.  During  this  time, 
and  afterward,  he  was  unconsciously  but  earnestly 
studying  the  peculiarities  of  the  negro's  character 
as  they  presented  themselves  in  every-day  life. 

After  proper  preparation  he  entered  Washing- 
ton College,  now  Washington  and  Lee  University. 
Here,  his  literary  taste  being  recognized,  he  was 
elected  by  his  fellows  editor  of  the  college  maga- 
zine. After  graduation  he  studied  law,  and  ob- 
tained his  degree  from  the  University  of  Virginia, 
and  commenced  his  legal  practice  in  Richmond. 
Meanwhile  Mr.  Page's  leisure  moments  were  de- 
voted to  literature  in  the  form  of  short  poems  and 
stories,  which  found  their  way  to  the  public  through 
newspapers  and  magazines.  These  attracted  the 
attention  of  editors  as  well  as  readers.  He  wrote 
Marse  Chan,  but  did  not  publish  it  for  some  time, 
when  it  was  received  with  great  favor.  Then  fol- 
lowed sketches  descriptive  of  similar  scenes,  de- 
picting the  traits  of  society  in  Virginia  before  and 
after  the  war,  having  as  a  background  the  rela- 
tions of  master  and  the  recent  slave.  The  titles 
of  these  books  indicate  their  contents,  as  Unc 
Edinburgs  Drowndin\  Meh  Lady,  and  In  Ok  Vir- 
ginia. 

Mr.  Harris  has  been  virtually  a  journalist  from 
his  youth,  for  at  the  age  of  fourteen  he  began  his 
apprenticeship  in  the  office  of  The  Countryman,  a 
weekly  paper  published  on  an  obscure  plantation 


X.]  FROM  1647    TO   1895.  219 

in  Georgia.  Like  Benjamin  Franklin,  the  youth 
soon  began  to  express  his  opinions  in  articles  which 
he  composed  while  setting  the  type.  The  editor 
quietly  encouraged  the  young  man  by  loaning  him 
useful  books,  but  the  latter  was  first  stimulated  to 
express  his  thoughts  by  the  simple  and  clear  style 
of  the  Vicar  of  Wakefield^  which  his  mother  read 
to  him  when  a  child. 

Living  in  an  isolated  portion  of  Georgia,  he 
became  acquainted  with  the  superstitions  of  the 
slaves,  and  with  their  songs,  so  full  of  expression  to 
them,  and  their  fables,  or  talks  of  animals,  equal  to 
Lucian's  best.  Prominent  among  the  latter  was 
Brer  Rabbit,  who  holds  forth  extensively.  Mr. 
Harris  first  published  Uncle  Remus,  his  Songs  and 
Sayings,  in  a  series  of  letters  to  the  Atlanta  Consti- 
tution ;  these  were  afterward  issued  in  book  form, 
and  revealed  to  readers  at  home  and  in  England 
a  new  and  interesting  phase  of  the  plantation  folk- 
lore among  the  negroes  of  the  Southern  States. 
Other  books  in  the  same  line  followed — A  Rainy 
Day  with  Uncle  Remus,  and  Nights  with  Uncle  Remus. 
He  also  wrote  sketches  of  the  *'  crackers,"  or  plain 
people  living  in  middle  Georgia,  and  of  the  moun- 
taineers and  moonshiners,  as  in  Mingo,  and  other 
Sketches,  and  Free  Joe  and  the  Rest  of  the  World, 
Mr.  Harris  deems  these  negro  stories  not  genuine 
literature,  and  he  significantly  characterizes  them 
as  "  stuff."  One  of  his  later  books  is  On  the  Plan- 
tation.  Mr.  Harris  has  been  on  the  editorial  staff 
of  the  Atlanta  Constitution  for  a  number  of  years. 

39.  The  Outlook. — There  are  nearly  five  hun- 
dred recorded  names  of  authors  who  have  aided 
in  creating  an  American  literature.  In  a  compen- 
dium so  concise  as  this,  though  reluctantly,  we 
must  omit  very  many  that  are  worthy  of  mention. 
There  is,  however,  no  more  cheering  feature  for 
the  American  literature  of  the  future  than  the  in- 


220  AMERICAN  LITERA  TURK.         [chap.  x. 

dications  of  a  free  and  untrammeled  spirit  in  tak- 
ing subjects  from  our  own  life  and  the  scenery  of 
our  own  land.  Still  more  important  will  be  the 
influence  upon  the  people  themselves,  in  turning 
their  attention  to  their  own  country,  and  in  their 
learning  to  appreciate  it  the  more.  We  have  not 
many  traditions  to  weave  into  stories,  but  we  have 
Nature  in  her  freshness  and  beauty,  and  a  pure  dO' 
mestic  life  moulded  by  freedom  of  thought. 


CiiAP.  I.]  QUESTIONS. 


QUESTIONS. 


CHAPTER   I. 

Sections  i,  2. 

1.  About  what  period  does  English  Uterature  begin  ? 

2.  Why  may  the  EngHsh  be  proud  of  their  literature  ? 

3.  Whence  did  the  English  come  to  Britain  ?     Give  an  account  of 
the  struggles  between  them  and  the  natives. 

4.  What  became  of  the  literature  of  the  native  Britons  ? 

5.  To  which  belongs  the  tale  of  King  Arthur  ? 

6.  Explain  in  what  respect  the  earliest  English  tongue  differed 
from  the  modern.     Give  the  illustration. 

Sections  4—7. 

1.  In  what  manner  was  Old  English  poetry  written  ? 

2.  What  is  said  of  the  length  of  lines  >     Explain  alliteration  and 
accent. 

3.  Give  examples  of  archaic  forms. 

4.  Explain  the  parallelisms.    When  and  how  did  a  French  system 
creep  in  ? 

5.  Give  a  summary  of  the  changes  made. 

6.  What  are  the  characteristics  of.  the  Continental  poetry  ? 

7.  What  is  said  of  the  Song  of  the  Traveller^  Deor''s  Complaint^ 
md  Fight  at  Finnesburg  ? 

8.  Describe  the  Old  English  epic,  Beowulf.     Give  its  story. 

9.  Explain  wherein  lies  its  social  interest  ;  its  poetic  force. 

10.  How  does  its  spirit  appear  in  modern  poetry  ? 

11.  Quote  the  description  of  the  dwelling-place  of  Grendel. 

Sections  7 — 10. 

1 .  In  what  manner  did  Christianity  modify  English  poetry  ? 

2.  How  does  the  love  of   domestic  life  and  of  nature  manifest 
itself  ? 

3.  What  does  Caedmon  tell  of  Christian  heroes  ? 

4.  Describe  how  the  spirit  of    Woden  was  softened  by  that  of 
Christ. 

5.  Ccedmon's  poem  proves  what  ?    Who  was  Caedmon  ? 

6.  Tell  the  story  of  his  life  ;  of  his  vision  and  his  song, 

7.  About  what  time  was  the  poem  written  ?    What  were  his  sur- 
roundings ? 

8.  Explain  the  poem  ;  show  why  it  was  a  paraphrase,  and  of  what  ? 


222  ENGLISH  LllERATURE.  [chap. 

9.  Point  out  the  portions  of  the  poem  that  contain  the  elements 
of  poetry. 

10.  What  parts  exhibit  dramatic  power  ?     How  does  he  compare 
with  Milton  ? 

11.  Name  the  characteristics  of  English  poetry  from  this  time 
onward. 

12.  Tell  the  story  of  Aldhelm  and  his  songs  ;  his  songs  to  the 
traders. 

13.  Give  a  summary  of  the  poem  Judith  ;  what  are  its  characteris- 
tics. 

Sections  11,  12. 

1.  What  was  the  character  of  the  poems  of  Cynewulf  ? 

2.  Name  and  describe  his  lyric  pieces  ;  also  his  religious  poems. 

3.  Describe  the  translations  in  the  Exeter  and  Vercelli  books. 

4.  Does  their  spirit  in  faith  go  beyond  the  grave  ? 

5 .  Were  war  songs  written  in  the  monasteries  ? 

6.  Name  the  two  war  songs  of  that  period,  and  their  counter- 
parts in  modern  times  ;  name  the  authors  of  the  latter. 

7.  Describe  the  fight  of  ^thelstan  and  Anlaf. 

8.  Give  the  story  of  the  death  of  Brihtnoth. 

9.  Why  is  the  poem  so  English  ? 

10.  Explain  why  English  war  poetry  for  a  time  decayed  ;  what 
victory  was  won  ? 

Sections  13 — 16. 

1.  At  what  date  and  with  whom  does  all  English  prose  begin  ? 

2.  Name  the  subjects  on  which  Baeda  wrote,  and  his  translation. 

3.  Tell  the  incidents  of  his  death. 

4.  What  invasion  interfered  with  this  literature  in  Northumbria ; 
and  why  ? 

5.  Describe  the  influence  of  -Alfred  the  Great  on  English  litera- 
ture. 

6.  How  did  he  promote  learning  ? 

7.  Mention  the  works  he  gave  to  the  nation. 

8.  Who  after  iElfred  continued  English  schools  and  had  transla- 
tions made  ? 

9.  Name  the  first  translator  of  a  portion  of  the  Bible. 

10.  How  was  this  revival  of  literature  cherished,  and  under  whom 
revived  ? 

11.  Describe  the  English  Chronicle;  how  long  did  it  last  ? 

12.  What  did  it  record,  and  what  were  its  characteristics  ? 

13.  In  whose  reign  did  English  poetry  revive  ?  and  in  whose  did 
English  prose  ? 

CHAPTER    II.,  p.  22. 

Sections  17,  18. 

1.  Name  the  length  of  time  covered  by  this  chapter. 

2.  What  effect  on  the  English  had  the  invasions  of  the  Danes  and 
the  Normans  ? 

3.  Give  the  reasons  why  the  English  absorbed  the  invaders. 

4.  Why  did  the  Normans  ally  themselves  with  the  English  against 
foreigners  ? 


II.]  QUESTIONS.  223 

5.  What  was  the  effect  on  the  English  tongue  ? 

6.  What  is  said  of  the  Moral  Ode  and  the  sayings  of  -Alfred  ? 

7.  By  what  two  works  is  the  continuity  of  the  EngUsh  language 
at  this  time  proved  ? 

8.  Under  what  three  forms  did  English  literature  revive  ?  and  in 
whose  reign  ? 

9.  Explain  why  French  literature  influenced  English  poetry  and 
not  its  prose. 

10.  Into  what  classes  did  this  poetical  literature  divide  itself  ? 

11.  Between  what  two  periods  did  religious  poetry  excel  .> 

12.  What  influenced  English  story- telling  poetry  to  become  the 
poetry  of  the  Court  .> 

13.  What  did  Chaucer  write  that  shows  him  the  best  example  of 
story-telling  ? 

14.  Describe  the  two  struggles.     What  did  England  win  ? 

15.  How  are  we  to  trace  the  process  of  the  change  ? 

Sections  19,  20. 

T.  Through  whom  was  England's  civilization  increased  ? 

2.  Explain  the  influence  of  foreign  nobles  and  monks  upon  the 
religious  life  of  the  people. 

3.  What  desire  grew  out  of  this  influence  ? 

4.  Describe  Ormin's  Ormulum.     What  does  it  mark  ? 

5.  What  is  said  of  his  ideal  monk  ? 

6.  Designate  the  pieces  that  bring  religious  poetry  to  the  year 
1300. 

7.  Explain  how  the   Normans  and   English  were  drawn  more 
closely  together. 

8.  Show  what  class  of  books  or  poems  were  written. 

9.  Name  the  translations  made,  and  who  by  ? 

10.  Cursor  Mundi :  what  its  character,  and  its  contents  ? 

11.  What  prose  work  was  translated  ;  what  poem  was  written  for 
the  unlearned  ? 

12.  Describe  the  vision  of  Piers  the  Plowman.    For  what  does  he 
plead  ">. 

Sections  21,  22. 

1.  What  literary  taste  was  brought  into  England  by  the  Normans  f 

2.  How  were  its  writers  styled  } 

3.  Show  in  what  respect  these  writings  were  changed  in  char- 
acter. 

4.  On  what  subjects  did  they  write  ? 

5.  Who  was  the  first  writer,  who  the  last,  and  what  the  time  in- 
tervening .? 

6.  When  did  historical  literature  again  rise,  and  through  whom  ? 

7.  What  change  of  feeling  took  place  among  the  Normans,  and 
how  were  they  interested  in  English  literature  ? 

8.  Describe  the  influence  of  this  welding  of  the  two  people  to- 
gether. 

9.  Give  the  substance  of  the  stories  told  by  the  Welsh  priest. 

10.  How  were  they  received  ?     Tell  what  grew  out  of  them. 

11.  Compare  them  with  Idylls  of  the  King. 

12.  Tell  the  story  of  these  legends  coming  back  to  England. 


224  ENGLISH  LITER  A  TURE.  [chap. 

Sections  23 — 25. 

1.  Describe  Layamon's  Brut.     What  does  he  say  of  himself  ? 

2.  In  what  measure  is  it  written  ?     How  doss  it  show  change  of 
language  ? 

3.  Name  the  stories  translated  from  the  French  into  the  English. 

4.  In  what  did  story-telling  become  French  in  form  ? 

5.  How   long  before  the  romantic  poetry  became   naturalized  ? 
Under  what  circumstances  ? 

6.  What  is  meant  by  the  Cycles  of  Romance  ? 

7.  Tell  how  King  Arthur  and  the  Round  Table  obtained  their 
place  in  English  literature. 

8.  Give  an  account  of  Charlemagne  and  his  twelve  peers. 

9.  Explain  the  romantic  fictions  about  Eskander. 

10.  Show  how  the  fourth  romantic  story  came  to  be  introduced 
into  English  literature. 

11.  What  other  romances  grew  out  of  the  taste  thus  formed  } 

12.  In  what  two  writers  does  the  influence  of  this  French  school 
show  itself  ? 

13.  In  what  translation  did  it  come  to  its  height  ? 

Sections  26 — 29. 

1.  Describe  English  lyrics,  idylls,  and  ballads.     Tell  the  story  of 
Robin  Hood. 

2.  Give  an  outline  of  the  idyll  the  Owl  and  Nightingale. 

3.  With  what  were  these  tinged  ? 

4.  Give  the  substance  of  the  satirical  poem  mentioned. 

5.  What  is  said  of  political  ballads  and  war  songs  ? 

6.  Explain  the  struggles  of  the  literary  English  language. 

7.  When  was  English  made  the  language  of  the  courts  of  law  ? 

8.  Show  how  the  Friars  brought  so  many  French  words  into  the 
language. 

9.  What  is  said  of  the  older  inflections,  prefixes,  and  endings  .> 

10.  Give  an  account  of  the  East  Midland  dialect,  and  its  influence. 

11.  What  effect  had  the  universities  on  the  language  ? 

12.  What  is  said  of  Wiclif's  translation  ? 

13.  Name  the  two  authors  who  ' '  fixed  the  language  "  in  a  clear 
form. 

14.  Why  was  it  called  the  "  King's  English  "  ? 

15.  Give  the  contrast  between  Wiclif  and  Langland. 

16.  Explain  the  religious  revival ;  the  influence  of  the  Friars. 

17.  Name  another  influence.    Give  the  discussion  on  equal  rights. 

18.  Enumerate  the  causes  that  brought  misery  upon  the  people. 

Sections  30 — 33. 

1.  Who  wrote  Piers  the  Ploivman  ?    How  does  he  describe  him- 
self ? 

2.  Give  an  account  of  his  vision  ;  its  characters  and  their  signifi- 
cance. 

3.  Explain  how  he  seeks  a  righteous  life  ;  and  his  allegories, 

4.  Describe  the  influence  that  his  books  exerted. 


III.]  QUESTIONS.  225 

5.  What  translation  did  much  to  "fix "  our  language  ? 

6.  When  accused,  in  what  language  did  he  defend  himself  ? 

7.  What  is  said  of  his  active  life  ? 

8.  To  what  year  does  this  work  come  ? 

9.  Describe  John  Gower's  influence  as  a  story-teller. 

10.  In  what  three  languages  were  his  books  written  ?    What  does 
that  indicate  ? 

11.  Give  a  summary  of  what  he  taught  in  his  English  book. 

12.  Relate  the  incident  with  Richard  II. 

Sections  34 — 39. 

1.  Give  a  sketch  of  Chaucer's  life. 

2.  Under  what  influence  were  his  first  two  books  written  ? 

3.  Explain  the  Italian  influence  on  his  poetry. 

4.  What  was  the  condition  of  Italian  poetry  at  the  time  ? 

5.  Whose  tales  did  he  read  and  translate  ? 

6.  Notice  the  character  of  the  changes  he  made  in  his  trans- 
lations. 

7.  Give  a  summary  of  the  stories  he  wrote. 

8.  Describe  Chaucer's  characters. 

9.  State  his  definition  of  a  gentleman.     Note  his  love  of  Nature. 

10.  Give  an  outline  of  the  Canterbury  Tales. 

11.  What  were  pilgrimages  in  those  days  ? 

12.  Of  what  do  the  Tales  treat  t 

13.  To  what  are  his  story  and  verse  compared  ? 

14.  What  elements  did  he  weave  into  his  English  ? 

15.  State  the  comparison  drawn  between  Chaucer  and  Gower. 

16.  Where  in  literature  does  Sir  John  Mandeville  belong  ? 


CHAPTER   III.,  p.  SO. 

Sections  40 — 43. 

1.  To  what  point  of  time  do  Chaucer  and  Langland  bring  us  ? 

2.  What  is  said  of  Chaucer's  influence  ? 

3.  Give  a  summary  of  the  poems  and  other  writings  of  John  Lyd- 
gate. 

4.  Notice  the  minor  poets  of  the  period. 

5.  What  is  said  in  respect  to  ballads  and  small  poems  ? 

6.  Name  the  ballads  sung  by  minstrels,  and  still  known  and  found 
in  books. 

Sections  44 — 46. 

1.  Describe  the  controversy  carried  on  by  Pecock,  Bishop  of  Chi- 
chester. 

2.  Name  the  first  theologian  who  wrote  in  English. 

3.  What  are  the  titles  and  character  of  the  books  written  by  Sir 
John  Fortescue  and  Sir  Thomas  Malory  ? 

4.  Who  was  Caxton  ?    Give  the  title  of  the  first  book  he  printed 

5.  What  effect  was  produced  on  the  English  language  by  his 
translations  ? 

6.  Give  a  summary  of  the  influence  of  Caxton's  publications. 

7.  State  the  effect  of  the  interest  taken  in  classical  literature. 


226  ENGLISH  LITERATURE,  [chap. 

8.  Describe  the  Paston  Letters, 

g.  What  interest  in  books  and  libraries  did  some  of  the  nobles 
take? 

10.  Name  the  classics  translated. 

11.  Explain  the  effect  on  the  English  of  the  revival  of  letters  in 
Italy. 

12.  By  what  means  did  the  New  Learning  increase  in  England  ? 

Sections  47,  48. 

1.  Show  the  influence  of  Henry  VIII.  on  prose  literature. 

2.  Trace  the  influence  of  Erasmus  and  Sir  Thomas  More. 

3.  What  is  said  of  E?iglisk  Renaissance  ? 

4.  Give  an  account  of  Roger  Ascham's  endeavors. 

5.  What  is  said  of  Tyndale  and  his  translation  of  the  Bible  ? 

6.  Give  a  summary  of  the  editions.     Show  the  effect  on  the  lan- 
guage. 

7.  How  did  his  translation  reach  America  ? 

8.  What  was  accomplished  by  Cranmer  and  Latimer  ? 

Sections  49 — 51. 

1.  Sketch  the  transition  period  from  the  old  poets. 

2.  Describe  the  Pastime  of  Pleasure  by  Stephen  Hawes. 

3.  What  is  said  of  the  writings  of  John  Skelton  ?     His  satire  on 
Wolsey  ? 

4.  What  does  he  write  against  in  Colin  Clout  ? 

5.  Give  an  account  of  his  other  writings,  and  their  influence. 

6.  Explain  his  position  in  the  transition. 

7.  Define  the  Scottish  poetry  of  the  period. 

8.  Give  the  outlines  of  Old  Northumbria,  and  its  history. 

9.  Account  for  the  peculiarities  of  Scottish  poetry. 

10.  Name  and  define  its  three  characteristics. 

Sections  52 — 54. 

1.  Compare  the  patriotism  of  the  English  and  that  of  the  Scotch. 
Show  the  influence, 

2.  Account  for  the  individuality  of  Scottish  poetry. 

3.  Describe  The  Bruce.     Give  the  story  of  James  I.  of  Scotland 
and  his  writings. 

4.  What  is  said  of  Robert  Henryson's  poems  ?    Whom  did  he 
imitate  ? 

5.  What  influence  did  William  Dunbar  exert  ?     Show  how. 

6.  Ncmie  the  translations  of  Gawin  Douglas  ;  describe  his  writ- 
ings. 

7.  Explain  how  Sir  David  Lyndsay  was  a  poet  and  reformer. 

8.  Describe  his  Satire  of  the  Three  Estates.     Show  his  influence. 

Section  55. 

1.  By  whom  was  the  Italian  influence  revived  ?  in  whose  reign  ? 

2.  What  was  the  effect  upon  the  English  poets  ? 

3.  Give  an  outline  of  the  poems  of  the  "  Amourists.'''' 


IV.]  QUESTION'S.  227 

4.  What  is  said  of  this  style  of  verse  ? 

5.  What  retarded  the  new  impulse  ? 

6.  Name  the  period  of  English  literature  about  to  be  ushered  in. 


CHAPTER    IV.,  p.  71. 
Sections  56 — 59. 

1.  Enumerate  the  influences  that  led  to  the  Elizabethan  litera- 
ture. 

2.  Give  a  summary  of  thejirsi  Elizabethan  period,  i.  Prose.  2. 
Poetry.  3.  Translations.  4.  Theological  reform.  5.  Histories.  6. 
English  tales.  7.  Pageants  and  plays,  how  conducted.  8.  Stories 
of  voyagers.     9.  Other  writers. 

3.  Give  an  account  of  the  literature  of  the  second  period. 

4.  Describe  John  Lyly's  Euphues ;  its  contents  and  style;  its 
influence. 

5.  What  is  said  of  Sir  Philip  Sidney's  Arcadia^  and  of  the  man 
himself  ? 

6.  The  Arte  of  Poesie  ;  why  written  ? 

7.  Name  the  other  books  on  the  subject.     State  their  influence. 

Sections  60 — 63. 

1.  Why  was  the  Laws  of  Ecclesiastical  Polity  written  ?  What  are 
its  merits  ? 

2.  Describe  Lord  Bacon's  Essays. 

3.  Tell  of  Hakluyt's  voyages,  etc. 

4.  Trace  the  origin  of  English  fiction. 

5.  Give  a  sketch  of  Edmund  Spenser,  his  youth  and  manhood. 

6.  Notice  the  characteristics  of  the  Shepheardes  Calender. 

7.  Give  an  outline  of  the  contents  of  the  Faerie  Queen.  What 
is  the  number  of  its  parts  ? 

8.  Explain  its  influence  on  English  poetry. 

9.  Name  and  describe  Spenser's  minor  poems.  What  is  said  of 
his  later  life  ? 

Sections  64 — 67. 

1.  Name  the  four  prominent  translators  and  their  respective 
works. 

2.  Tell  of  the  influence  of  Italy,  of  Greece,  and  of  France. 

3.  Give  in  order  a  sketch  of  Elizabethan  poetry,  and  show  how  it 
reflected  the  whole  of  English  life. 

4.  What  is  the  character  of  Southwell's  poems  ? 

5.  Give  a  summary  of  the  love  poetry  of  the  time. 

6.  What  is  stated  of  William  Drummond  ? 

7.  Explain  how  patriotic  poets  arose  in  England,  and  their  influ 
?nce. 

8.  Name  the  three  chief  poets  of  this  class. 

9.  Describe  Albion's  En^land^  and  the  subjects  treated. 

10.  Give  an  outline  of  Polyolbion. 

11.  What  changed  the  tone  of  this  poetry  ? 

12.  Mention  the  causes  that  mark  the  change. 

20 


228  ENGLISH  LITERA  TURE,  [chap. 

Sections  68 — 74. 

1.  Explain  why  the  drama  in  England  began  in  religion. 

2.  Give  the  subjects  of  these  plays  in  their  order. 

3.  Describe  a  "  Miracle  Play."     What  were  "  Mystery"  represen- 
tations ? 

4.  Explain  what  was  intended  to  be  taught  in  "the  Morality." 

5.  How  is  the  transition  traced  from  religious  plays  to  the  regular 
drama  } 

6.  Tell  of  John  Heywood.     Describe  his  Interludes  ;  what  grew 
out  of  them  ? 

7.  Name  the  sources  from  which  these  dramas  were  derived. 

8.  Give  a  description  of  the  first  theatre  and  its  accompaniments. 

9.  In  what  metres  were  the  plays  written  ? 

10.  What  was  the  number  of  the  plays  produced,  and  of  the  songs 
m  them .? 

11.  Give  a  summary  of  what  was  done  by  Lyly,  Peele,  Greene, 
and  Marlowe. 

12.  What  were  the  characteristics  of  these  dramas  ? 

13.  Describe  the  strange  contrasts  existing  at  the  time. 

Sections  75 — 80. 

1.  Give  a  sketch  of  Shakespeare ;  his  domestic  life ;  how  he  be- 
came a  playwright. 

2.  What  is  the  theory  in  respect  to  his  first  play  ?  when  written  ? 

3.  Trace  his  progress  from  "  touching  up  "  old  plays  till  the  time 
he  composed  them  himself. 

4.  Mention  his  first  three  plays  ;  give  their  peculiar  features. 

5.  State  what  is  said  of  his  historical  plays. 

6.  Name  the  plays  written  during  his  second  period. 

7.  What  change  came  into  his  writings  ? 

8.  With  whom  was  he  popular,  and  in  what  respect  ? 

9.  Under  what  circumstances  did  he  write  Hamlet^  and  other  plays 
of  his  third  period. 

10.  Give  a  reason  why  in  these  he  depicts  the  ' '  darker  sins  of 
men." 

11.  Give  a  sketch  of  his  last  plays;  with  what  spirit  were  they 
written  ? 

12.  Give  a  summary  of  his  work.     Explain  the  Epilogue  to  The 
Tempest. 

13.  How  is  it  visible  how  he  was  influenced  ? 

Sections  81 — 85. 

1.  In  what  respect  did  the  drama  decay  ? 

2.  What  is  the  character  of  the  plays  of  Ben  Jonson  ? 

3.  What  phase  of  human  nature  did  they  delineate  ? 

4.  Enumerate  the  plays  he  wrote. 

5.  In  what  manner  were  the  Masques  written  ? 

6.  When  did  they  attain  their  highest  popularity  ? 

7.  Give  the  traits  of  Beaumont  and  Fletcher  as  writers. 

8.  Describe  Massinger  as  a  writer.    To  what  extremes  did  he  go  ? 


v.]  QUESTIONS.  229 

9.  Mention  what  is  said  of  John  Webster's  manner  of  expression. 

10.  Who  was  the  last  of  the  Elizabethan  dramatists  ? 

11.  Give  an  account  of  the  strolling  players. 

12.  With  what  "  opera"  began  the  new  drama  ? 


CHAPTER   v.,  p.   108. 

Sections  86 — 89. 

1.  Describe  the  change  in  prose  literature  after  Elizabeth's  death. 

2.  In  what  consisted  the  new  type  of  poetry  ? 

3.  The  Advancement  of  Learning  ;  what  impulse  did  it  give  ? 

4.  What  good  work  had  science  done  ? 

5.  Mention  the  historical  literature  of  the  time. 

6.  What  is  said  of  Sir  Walter  Raleigh  ?  and  other  historians  ? 

7.  Name  what  subjects  miscellaneous  literature  touched  upon. 

8.  Give  an  account  of  the  religious  literature. 

9.  What  is  said  of  the  founding  of  libraries  ? 

10.  Of  theology — as  represented  by  Jeremy  Taylor  and  Richard 
Baxter  ;  Chillingworth  and  John  Milton  ? 

11.  Describe  the  style  of  writing  during  this  time. 

Sections  90 — 95. 

1.  Name  the  element  that  pervaded  the  poetry  at  the  time. 

2.  When  did  this  spirit  become  less  ?     Give  the  illustration. 

3.  Explain  in  what  manner  the  fantastic  style  grew  up. 

4.  Describe  the  lyric  poetry  during  the  Civil  War. 

5.  Of  what  did  the  songs  and  epigrams  treat  ?    When  did  they 
change  ? 

6.  Give  a  sketch  of  the  satirical  poetry  of  this  period. 

7.  Explain  how  pastoral  poetry  arose. 

8.  Contrast  rural  with  town  poetry. 

9.  What  is  said  of  the  imitation  of  Spenser  by  certain  writers  ? 

10.  Describe  the  religious  poetry  of  George  Herbert  and  Henry 
Vaughan. 

IE.  Name  the  other  poets;    some   Roman   Catholic  and  some 
Puritan. 

12.  What  is  said  of  the  position  of  John  Dryden  ? 

Sections  96 — loi. 

1.  John  Milton.     Describe  his  youth;   his  university  life;    his 
studies  at  Horton. 

2.  When  did  he  visit  Italy  ?    Why  did  he  return  to  England  ? 

3.  Why  did  he  write  scarcely  any  poetry  for  twenty  years  ? 

4.  Give  an  account  of  his  controversial  pamphlets  and  their  influ- 
ence. 

5.  What  are  the  leading  characteristics  of  Paradise  Lost  ? 

6.  Explain  the  beauty  of  the  poem ;  its  ideal  purity  ;  the  degrada 
tion  of  Satan  ;  and  the  sad  image  in  the  closing  lines. 

7.  Paradise  Regained.     What  are  its  characteristics  ? 

8.  What  the  teaching  in  Samson  Agonistes  ? 

9.  Point  out  the  traits  of  mind  that  Milton  exemplifies. 


230  ENGLISH  LITERATURE.  [chap. 

10.  Give  a  summary  of  Milton's  poetic  force  and  taste. 

11.  Pilgrim's  Progress.     What  is  its  spirit,  and  of  what  does  it 
treat  ? 

12.  Account  for  this  book  still  living  in  literature. 

13.  Why  is  it  the- language  of  the  English  people  ? 


CHAPTER   VI.,  p.   12s. 

Sections  102 — 104. 

1.  Explain  the  change  that  occurred  in  the  style  of  poetry. 

2.  Why  do  certain  poets  write  in  a  natural  style  ? 

3.  When  national  life  grows  chill,  what  effect  is  produced  ? 

4.  Account  for  Milton's  influence  on  style. 

5.  Describe  the  other  influences  mentioned. 

6.  The  Elizabethan  poets  wrote  on  what  subject  ?     How  was  it 
treated  ? 

7.  How  did  Dryden  and  Pope  treat  man  ? 

8.  Give  an  account  of  the  transition  poets.     What  new  interest 
was  rising  ? 

V.  Contrast  the  two  famous  satires  of  this  period.     Describe  each. 

Sections  105 — 107. 

1.  Explain  how  Dryden  became  the  introducer  of  a  new  school  of 
poetry. 

2.  In  what  way  is  his  change  of  opinions  accounted  for  ? 

3.  Give  an  epitome  of  his  satire  of  Absalom  and  Ahitophel ;  of 
the  Hind  and  Panther  ;  and  of  his  Religio  Laid. 

4.  What  is  said  of  his  fables  and  translations  ? 

5.  The  influence  of  Bishop  Ken,  how  used  ? 

6.  Nam 2  the  society  founded  ;  give  a  summary  of  the  sciences  it 
was  designed  to  promote. 

7.  Mention  the  discoveries  of  Sir  Isaac  Newton. 

8.  To  what  kind  of  knowledge  was  the  intellectual  inquiry  of  the 
Nation  directed  ?     Explain  the  two  sides  taken. 

9.  Give  a  summary  of  the  theological  literature  of  the  period. 

10.  Mention  the  names  of  the  preachers  and  writers  in  the  contro- 
versy in  relation  to  Atheism  and  Deism. 

Sections  108 — no. 

1.  Give  an  outline  of  the  discussion  on  the  science  of  government 
and  social  questions. 

2.  From  what  point  did  Hobbes  discuss  these  questions  ? 

3.  State  the  positions  maintained  in  his  Leviathan. 

4.  Give  an  outline  of  the  arguments  on  both  sides. 

5.  What  science  was  for  the  first  time  partially  treated  ? 

6.  John  Locke.     State  his  three  positions  in  his  Civil  Government. 

7.  How  did  he  carry  the  same  spirit  into  another  realm  of  thought  ? 

8.  What  is  said  of  his  Essay  on  the  Human  Understanding  ? 

9.  Sketch  the  miscellaneous  literature  of  the  time. 

10.  Name  the  authors  ;  describe  the  essays,  letter-writing,  etc. 


VII.]  QUESTIONS.  231 

Sections  iii — 114. 

1.  Give  an  account  of  the  literature  known  as  that  of  Queen  Anne 
and  the  first  Georges. 

2.  What  opinions  gave  rise  to  it,  and  where  was  it  concentrated  ? 

3.  Who  were  the  Whigs  and  who  the  Tories  ? 

4.  Describe  this  party  literature,  and  its  effect  upon  pure  liter- 
ature. 

5.  Name  the  subjects  discussed  ;  what  was  the  influence  on  the  style 
of  English  prose  ? 

6.  Alexander  Pope.     Give  a  sketch  of  his  life  and  a  summary  of 
his  writings  ;  their  design  and  effect. 

7.  Describe  the  Moral  Essays^  the  Essay  on  Man^  the  Satires^  and 
the  Epistles. 

8.  What  is  said  of  his  translations,  and  his  love  of  literature  ? 

9.  Of  the  minor  poets  what  is  said  "i    Give  a  summary  of  their 
songs  and  ballads. 

10.  What  impulse  rang  the  knell  of  criticism  ? 

Sections  115 — 118. 

1.  Give  the  four  great  names  in  prose  literature  at  this  time. 

2.  What  is  said  of  each  one  and  his  writings  } 

3.  Describe  Bishop  Butler's  great  work. 

4.  Metaphysical  literature.     T\i<^  Minute  Philosopher ;  viYi'aX  ^\di  \\. 
teach  ? 

5.  The  Fable  of  the  Bees  ;  tried  to  prove  what  ? 

6.  Periodical  essays  ;  their  design  ?    Of  what  did  the  Tatler  treat  ? 

7.  What  is  said  of  the  Spectator  ?    The  Guardian  ? 

8.  Their  influence  on  the  people  ?   Who  were  the  principal  writers  ? 

9.  In  the  drama,  what  new  form  was  introduced  ? 

10.  From  whom  did  the  dramatic  writers  sometimes  borrow  ? 

11.  What  is  said  of  the  influence  of  Dry  den  on  the  drama  ? 

12.  In  what  form  did  the  dramatists  succeed  ? 

13.  How  was  the  drama  partially  purified  ? 

14.  Of  what  was  the  stage  made  a  vehicle  ? 

15.  How  long  did  the  influence  of  the  Restoration  on  the  drama 
last? 

16.  With  whom  does  the  elder  English  drama  close  ? 


CHAPTER   VII.,  p.   14S. 

Sections  119 — 121. 

1.  With  the  rapid  increase  of  what  is  paralleled  the  growth  of 
literature  ? 

2.  Give  the  four  causes  of  this  literary  progress. 

3.  What  is  said  of  the  effect  of  a  good  style  ?    And  also  of  the 
long  peace  ? 

4.  Show  the  influence  of  the  Press  on  the  literature  of  the  period. 

5.  What  right  did  the  Press  claim  and  obtain  ? 

[Note  :  The  freedom  of  the  Press  was  established  in  New  York 


232  ENGLISH  LITERATURE,  [chap. 

thirty-seven  years  before  this.     See  Patton's  *'  Concise  History  of  the 
American  People,"  p.  221.] 

6.  Explain  the  influence  on  English  literature  of  French  authors 
and  German  writers, 

7.  Tell  the  story  of  Samuel  Johnson. 

8.  Give  an  account  of  his  writings,  and  show  their  influence. 

9.  What  is  said  of  Oliver  Goldsmith,   Edmund  Burke,  and  Sir 
Joshua  Reynolds  ? 

10.  Who  originated  the  modem  novel  ?    Define  the  novel. 

11.  What  field  does  it  occupy  for  its  subjects  ? 

12.  Give  the  characteristics  of  each  of  these  authors. 

Sections  122,  123. 

1.  Mention  the  first  three  prominent  English  historians. 

2.  Give  the  titles  of  their  histories,  and  the  characteristic  of  each 
as  to  style. 

3.  Name  in  order  the  merits  and  defects  of  each. 

4.  Explain  David  Hume's  theory  of  philosophy. 

5.  Define  what  he  means  by  his  measure  of  virtue,  and  the  influ- 
ence of  the  theory. 

6.  Name  his  works  in  their  order  ;  what  may  be  inferred  from  the 
last  two  ? 

7.  Give  the  theory  of  the  Wealth  of  Nations.     What  questions 
were  involved  ? 

8.  Enumerate  the  effects  of  industry  from  1720  to  1770. 

9.  Give  an  account  of  the  Social  Reform  ;  its  influence  on  litera- 
ture and  on  popular  education. 

10.  What  are  the  characteristics  of  Edmund  Burke's  speeches  and 
writings  ? 

11.  Show  their  literary  merits  and  defects  ;  account  for  their  in- 
fluence. 

Sections  124 — 129. 

1.  What  city  had  become  a  literary  centre  ? 

2.  State  the  effects  of  the  doctrines  of  the  French  Revolution. 

3.  Explain  the  influence  of  the  great  journals. 

4.  Give  a  summary  of  the  means  used  to  educate  the  people. 

5.  Name  the  Reviews  and  Magazines  ;  tell  how  they  grew  up. 

6.  What  made  them  a  power  ? 

7.  What  literature  received  an  impulse  from  the  Wesleys  and 
George  Whitfield  ? 

8.  Name  the  writers  on  the  evidences  of  Christianity. 

9.  Mention  the  names  of  the  Scotch  mental  philosophers. 

10.  What  was  the  influence  of  Aids  to  Reflection  ? 

11.  What  was  put  forth  by  Jeremy  Bentham  ? 

12.  Give  what  is  said  on  books  of  travel. 

13.  Explain  the  position  of  historical  literature. 

14.  Sum  up  what  is  said  of  the  novel  of  this  period. 

15.  Give  a  sketch  of  each  of  Walter  Scott's  novels. 


VIII.]  QUESTIONS.  233 

CHAPTER   VIII.,  p,  IBS. 

Sections  130 — 133. 

I.  Give  an  outline  of  the  two  periods  of  poetry  to  be  studied. 
3.  State  the  influence  of  didactic  and  satirical  poetry. 

3.  Show  the  effect  of  the  Greek  and  Latin  classics  in  forming  a 
more  artistic  poetry. 

4.  What  was  the  result  of  a  careful  study  of  the  older  English 
authors  ? 

5.  State  the  new  element  introduced  ;  give  examples  of  the  nar- 
rative, ballad,  and  romance. 

6.  Cite  Ossian  and  Chatterton. 

7.  What  reaction  took  place,  and  how  ? 

8.  Give  the  criticism  on  the  style  of   poetry  from  Elizabeth  to 
George  I. 

9.  On  what  two  subjects  have  poets  always  worked  ? 

10.  Explain  how  man  in  connection  with  Nature  furnishes  sub- 
jects to  the  poets. 

II.  Account  for  the  change  to  natural  description. 

12.  Describe  Thomson's  Seasons  ;  what  was  its  influence  ? 

13.  How  did  descriptions  of  natural  scenery  come  to  be  interwoven 
with  reflections  on  human  life  ? 

14.  What  influence  had  foreign  travel  on  the  love  of  Nature  } 

15.  Instance  Goldsmith  and  Collins. 

16.  What  is  said  of  the  Minstrel  ?    What  does  the  story  resemble  ? 

Sections  134 — 138. 

1.  State  how  a  change  of  subject  began  ;  the  individual  man. 

2.  Mention  the  various  ways  in  which  the  poor  were  introduced 
into  poetry. 

3.  Give  the  titles  of  poems  bearing  on  man  as  a  subject. 

4.  Scottish  poetry  ;  describe  the  Gentle  Shepherd. 

5.  State  what  is  said  of  the  ballad  in  Scotland. 

6.  Name  the  three  poets  of  the  second  period  of  the  new  poetry. 

7.  State  the  features  of  William  Blake's  poetry. 

8.  Describe  Cowper's  poems.     What  element  did  he  introduce  ? 

9.  What  are  the  links  that  connect  him  with  different  periods  of 
poetry  ? 

10.  How  did  he  regard  the  brotherhood  of  man  ? 

11.  This  led  to  poems  on  what  questions  ? 

12.  Give  a  summary  of  the  wonderful  change. 

13.  How  are  we  brought  face  to  face  with  the  pictures  of  life  in 
the  poems  of  Crabbe  ? 

14.  Compare  him  with  Cowper. 

15.  Describe  the  Farmer's  Boy  and  the  Rural  Tales  ;  what  was  th« 
influence  of  this  style  of  poetry  ? 

16.  Who  afterward  took  it  up  and  added  new  features  ? 

Sections  139,  140. 

1.  Name  the  element  restored  to  poetry  by  Robert  Burns. 

2.  Why  did  he  sing  of  the  poor  ?   Notice  the  dates  of  the  three  poets. 


234  ENGLISH  LITERATURE.  [chap. 

3.  Account  for  human  sympathy  leading  these  three  poets  to  have 
tenderness  for  animals. 

4.  State  what  is  specially  marked  in  Burns. 

5.  What  spoiled  his  life  ? 

6.  What  is  said  of  the  ideas  brought  into  view  by  the  French 
Revolution  in  respect  to  man  ? 

7.  Explain  the  influence  of  these  ideas  of  man's  equality,  and  the 
reaction  upon  Wordsworth,  Southey,  Coleridge,  and  Walter  Scott. 

Sections  141 — 144. 

1.  What  is  said  of  Southey  ?    What  of  Coleridge  ? 

2.  Mention  the  influence  on  the  latter  of  the  defection  of  France. 

3.  Name  the  principal  poems  of  Southey. 

4.  State  the  opinion  in  respect  to  the  beauty  of  Coleridge's  poetry 

5.  Describe  Wordsworth's  youth  and  training. 

6.  In  what  way  were  the  lyrical  ballads  published  ? 

7.  What  is  said  of  the  Prelude  and  the  lixcursion  ? 

8.  How  in  accordance  with  his  views  was  Nature  in  harmony  with 
man  ? 

9.  Account  for  his  minute  observation  of  Nature. 

10.  Show  how  he  came  to  honor  man  as  a  part  of  the  being  of 
Nature. 

11.  State  his  disappointment ;  his  hatred  of  oppression. 

12.  Give  the  subjects  of  a  series  of  his  sonnets. 

13.  Account  for  his  being  truly  a  poet  of  mankind. 

14.  State  what  criticism  must  confess.    Wherein  is  he  like  Milton  ? 

Sections  145 — 147. 

1.  Mention  the  three  famous  narrative  poems  of  Walter  Scott. 

2.  What  is  said  of  his  lyrics  ?     Describe  how  he  represents  land- 
scape in  his  word-painting. 

3.  Analyze  Campbell's  Pleasures  of  Hope.     What  are  his  promi- 
nent poems  ? 

4.  Describe  the  Pleasures  of  Memory. 

5.  Why  is  there  no  trace  of  the  civil  commotions  of  Europe  found 
in  the  poetry  of  Rogers  ? 

6.  What  are  the  characteristics  of  the  poetry  of  Thomas  Moore  } 

7.  Name  the  underlying  subject  of  his  songs. 

Sections  148 — 150. 

1.  Who  were  the  post-revolution  poets  ? 

2.  What  is  said  of  Childe  Harold  and  other  poems  of  Byron  ? 

3.  Give  an  analysis  of  his  dramas,  and  of  his  life. 

4.  For  what  purpose  did  he  seem  to  write  narrative  poetry  ?    Dc 
scribe  Cain. 

5.  Why  did  he  write  in  opposition  to  social  morality  ? 

6.  Describe  him  as  a  poet  of  Nature. 

7.  Analyze  his  great  power. 

8.  What  is  the  prominent  idea  in  Shelley's  Queen  Mab  ? 

9.  Explain  the  poem  Alastor. 

10.  What  are  the  sentiments  expressed  in  the  Revolt  of  Islam  f 


VIII.]  QUESTIONS,  235 

11.  Explain  why  his  poetry  became  more  masculine. 

12.  What  is  represented  in  Prometheus  Unbound  ?    State  its  ideas. 

13.  Describe  the  Cenci  and  Adonais. 

14.  How  does  Shelley's  view  of  Nature  compare  with  that  of 
Wordsworth  ? 

15.  What  was  the  character  of  his  later  poetry  ? 

Sections  151,  152. 

1.  Draw  a  parallel  between  Shelley  and  Keats. 

2.  For  what  reason  did  Keats  go  to  Greek  and  mediaeval  life  foi 
subjects  ">. 

3.  Describe  his  style.     What  does  he  mark  in  modern  English 
poetry  ? 

4.  Of  what  impulse  does  Keats  mark  the  exhaustion  ? 

5.  Tell  why  indifferent  thought  was  expressed  in  pleasant  verse. 

6.  State  the  effect  of  the  reform  agitation,  and  the  religious  move- 
ment at  Oxford. 

7.  What  is  said  of  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Browning  ? 

8.  Give  the  characteristics  of  the  former's  sympathies. 

9.  What  is  said  of  Tennyson's  Idylls  ? 

10.  Describe  the  new  class  of  literary  poets. 

11.  Compare  in  time  Tennyson's  //(^r^?/^  (1877)  with  Caedmon's 
Paraphrase  (about  670). 


23i  AMERICAN  LITERATURE.  [chap. 


QUESTIONS. 


CHAPTER   IX. 
Sections  i,  2. 

1.  Upon  what  depends  the  success  of  literature  ? 

2.  What  its  theory,  and  should  be  its  influence  ? 

3.  Name  the  advantages  the  colonists  brought  with  them.     To 
what  did  these  lead  ? 

4.  When  were  public  schools  established  ?    What  instance  does  it 
mark  ? 

5.  Describe  the  practice,  and  state  the  result. 

6.  How  was  the  literature  of  the  Colonial  period  influenced  ? 

7.  Explain  why  that  literature  had  little  effect  on  the  present. 

Sections  3 — 5. 

1.  Give  an  account  of  Jonathan  Edwards.     Name  the  books  hi 
wrote. 

2.  What  is  said  of  the  last  one  mentioned  ? 

3.  On  what  literature  has  his  influence  been  marked  } 

4.  Name  the  works  of  Timothy  Dwight.     How  written.     What 
their  influence. 

5.  Give  the  story  of  Benjamin  Franklin. 

6.  State  his  efforts  in  behalf  of  education,  economy,  and  literature. 

7.  Explain  how  he  showed  his  practical  wisdom. 

Sections  6 — 8. 

1.  State  how  a  change  took  place  in  the  literature  of  that  period. 

2.  Name  those  who  took  part  in  these  discussions. 

3.  What  is  the  character  of  their  writings,  and  those  of  George 
Washington  ? 

4.  Give  an  account  of  the  Federalist.     How  did  it  accomplish  its 
work  ? 

5.  Explain  why  newspapers  and  journalists  increased  in  numbers. 

6.  How  long  did  the  influence  of  the  latter  continue  ? 

7.  State  what  the  American  writers  of  this  period  did  for  them- 
selves. 

8.  Why  did  the  people  begin  to  read  more  on  general  subjects  ? 

Sections  9,  10. 

1.  Who  was  the  harbinger  in  the  field  of  American  romance  ? 

2.  Describe  him  as  an  author.     What  the  character  of  his  wrf 
tin^  y 


ix."^  QUESTIONS.  237 

3.  He  was  the  first  American  author  to  do  what  ? 

4.  Who  followed  in  this  field  ?     With  what  success  ? 

5.  What  elaborate  work  did  he  also  write  ? 

6.  Why  were  Cooper's  novels  so  popular  ? 

7.  Who  stands  preeminent  in  American  literature  ? 

8.  In  what  consists  the  charm  of  Irving's  writings  ? 

9.  Give  a  summary  of  his  works. 

10.  Who,  as  writers,  were  Irving's  contemporaries  ? 

11.  After  what  was  the  Salmagundi  modelled  ? 

12.  Name  the  chief  work  of  Drake  and  its  characteristic. 

Sections  11,  12. 

1.  Explain  the  cause  of  different  theological  opinions. 

2.  Describe  the  noted  controversy.     Where  was  its  centre  ? 

3.  Give  a  sketch  of  Channing. 

4.  What  organs  were  established  ?    What  is  said  of  their  readers  ? 

5.  Name  the  other  parties  drawn  into  this  controversy. 

6.  In  what  two  respects  is  our  historical  literature  noted  ? 

7.  Name  the  authors  who  treat  of   foreign  countries.      Give  a 
summary  of  their  works. 

8.  Name  the  authors  of  United  States  histories.     What  period 
do  they  cover  ? 

p.  What  is  said  of  the  school  histories  and  one  other  ? 
10.  Give  a  summary  of  Jared  Sparks's  writings. 

Section  13. 

1.  In  what  respect  can  we  compare  the  poetry  of  America  with 
that  of  England  ? 

2.  Describe  the  characteristics  of  the  poetry  of  Bryant. 

3.  What  translations  has  he  made  } 

4.  State  the  literary  career  of  Longfellow. 

5.  What  desirable  qualities  are  found  in  his  writings  ? 

6.  Explain  the  popularity  of  his  works. 

7.  How  has  Whittier  been  characterised  ?    What  the  influence  of 
his  poetry  ? 

8.  Give  a  sketch  of  the  two  writers — Holmes  and  Lowell. 

9.  Name  their  writings. 

Sections  14 — 17. 

1.  What  is  said  of  the  hosts  of  writers  ? 

2.  Where   are   the   readers   found  ?      How  do  they  apply   the 
thoughts  of  others  ? 

3.  Describe  the  luxury  and  the  result. 

4.  State  how  an  impulse  has  been  given  to  literature. 

5.  Explain  the  features  of  these  literary  times. 

6.  What  is  said  of  woman  as  a  writer  ? 

7.  Give  a  sketch  of  the  literature  of  the  newspaper. 

8.  Name  the  advantages  derived  from  the  notices  of  books. 

9.  State  what  is  said  of  miscellaneous  writers. 


23?  AMERICAN  LJTERA  TURK.  [chap. 

Sections  i8,  19. 

1.  Describe  the  influence  of  political  discussions  on  literature. 

2.  Name  the  men  of  a  brilliant  period. 

3.  Give  a  summary  of  the  contrast. 

4.  What  is  said  of  the  agitation  ? 

5»  Explain  in  what  respect  our  literature  is  rich. 

6.  Describe  the  influence  of  the  essayists. 

7.  What  has  been  the  effect  of  popular  lectures  ? 

8.  Name  the  authors  in  this  class.     Their  writings. 


I. 


Section  20. 

Give  a  sketch  of  Hawthorne's  style,  and  name  his  writings. 
What  is  said  of  Simms's  works  and  of  himself  ? 


What  is  said  of  Simms's  works  and  of  himself  } 

3.  Why  was  Uncle  Tom's  Cabin  so  popular  ? 

4.  Name  Mrs.  Stowe's  other  books. 

5.  State  what  is  said  of  Stoddard's  literary  labours. 

6.  Name  Stedman's  writings.     Why   does  he  stand  high  as  a 
critic  "> 

7.  Of  what  kind  of  writing  was  the  civil  war  an  occasion  ? 

8.  Describe  Bayard  Taylor  as  an  author. 

9.  Explain  the  novelty  of   the  writings  of  Joaquin  Miller  and 
Bret  Harte. 

10.  Give  a  description  of  J.  G.  Saxe's  poetry. 

Section  22. 

1.  What  is  said  of  Jim  Bludso  ?    How  has  the  author  been  com- 
plimented ? 

2.  State  what  Is  said  of  the  stories  and  poems  of  T.  B.  Aldrich. 

3.  Describe  the  author  of  Sevenoaks  as  a  writer  and  editor. 

4.  What  advantage  has  the  author  of  the  Circuit  Rider  in  his 
subjects  ? 

5.  Explain  the  secret  of  the  popularity  of  his  writings. 

6.  From  what  class  of  subjects  does  Howells  derive  his  scenes  ? 

7.  Describe  his  style  and  manner.     Name  his  writings. 

8.  Give  an  account  of  the  two  authors.     Name  their  writings. 

9.  What  is  said  of  the  writings  of  E.  E.  Hale  and  T.  W.  Higgin- 
son  ? 

10.  Explain  the  charm  of  Charles  Dudley  Warner's  writings 

Sections  23,  24. 

1.  What  is  said  of  female  writers  ?    What  may  be  termed  their 
field? 

2.  Name  Mrs.  W^hitney's  writingfs  and  Miss  Alcott's. 

3.  State  the  character  of  Mrs.  Ward's  style  and  writings. 

4.  What  is  said  of  Mrs.  Spofford  and  Mrs.  Burnett  as  to  theii 
novels  ? 

5.  Describe  the  writings  of  E.  P.  Roe  and  Mrs.  Prentiss  as  tc 
their  purpose. 

6.  What  literature  has  grown  up  recently  "* 


X.]  QUESTIONS,  239 

Sections  25,  26. 

1.  What  is  said  of  Biblical  learning  and  systematic  theology  ? 

2.  Name  the  work  of  Professor  Robinson.     State  its  influence. 

3.  Name  those  who  have  engaged  in  Biblical  interpretation. 

4.  Give  the  authors  and  titles  of  works  written  as  collateral  with 
Biblical  learning. 

5.  Name  the  authors  and  their  works  on  Church  history. 

Sections  27,  28, 

1.  Give  the  titles  of  the  works  on  jurisprudence  and  international 
law.     Name  the  authors. 

2.  Upon  what  other  subjects  have  many  American  authors  written  ? 

3.  Give  a  summary  of  the  outlook. 

CHAPTER    X. 

Sections  29,  30. 

1.  What  is  said  of  Mr.  Crawford's  education  ? 

2.  Name  his  first  two  books,  and  state  the  scenes  they  describe. 

3.  What  are  the  titles  of  his  other  books  ? 

4.  Name  the  titles  and  characteristics  of  the  two  prominent  books 
of  Mr.  Wallace. 

5.  What  is  said  of  the  traits  of  Mr.  Carleton's  writings  ? 

Sections  31,  32. 

1.  Give  the  subjects. 

2.  Name  the  titles  of  the  books  written  by  Dr.  McCosh  ;  by  Pro- 
fessors Ladd,  Shields,  Schaff,  Shedd,  Vincent,  and  Briggs. 

Section  33. 

1.  Name  the  writers  who  illustrate  Creole  folklore. 

2.  What  are  their  respective  characteristics  ? 

3.  Explain  how  they  became  versed  in  the  subjects  on  which  they 
wrote. 

Section  34. 

1.  Who  were  the  two  Virginians  ? 

2.  What  is  said  of  the  mental  training  of  Miss  Rives  ? 

3.  Trace  the  effect  upon  her  writings. 

4.  What  was  her  mode  of  composing  ? 

5.  State  the  traits  of  character  that  Miss  Magruder  describes. 

Section  35. 

1.  What  is  said  of  the  ancestors  of  these  now  illiterate  people  ? 

2.  Their  origin  and  religious  faith  ?    The  Mecklenburg  Conven- 
tion ? 

3.  The  spirit  of  slavery— how  manifested  ? 

4.  The  future  effects  of  public  schools  ? 

5.  Who  were  the  governing  class  ? 

21 


240  AMERICAN  LITERA  TURE,         [chap.  x. 

6.  How  were  these  people  stigmatized  ? 

7.  Repeat  the  remark  of  Mr.  W.  G.  Simms. 

8.  State  why  our  literature  is  becoming  nationcil. 

Sections  36,  37. 

1.  What  is  said  of  Miss  Baylor  ? 

2.  Give  an  outline  of  On  Both  Sides.     Miss  Baylor's  style. 

3.  Give  an  account  of  Miss  McClelland's  youth,  and  of  Olivion. 

4.  State  the  history  of  Miss  Murfree's  first  book. 

5.  Under  what  name  does  she  write  ? 

6.  What  is  said  of  her  descriptions  of  natural  scenery  ? 

7.  Name  the  titles  of  her  books. 

8.  Give  an  outline  of  the  youth  and  education  of  Professor  John- 
ston. 

9.  What  class  of  the  Georgia  people  does  he  specially  describe  ? 

Sections  38,  39. 

1.  Give  a  sketch  of  the  two  delineators  of  negro  folklore. 

2.  Describe  their  training  in  that  line  of  study. 

3.  Name  the  titles  of  the  books  written  by  Mr.  Page.     What  do 
they  indicate  ? 

4.  In  what  way  did  Mr.  Harris  become  familiar  with  the  notions 
and  dialects  of  the  negroes  ? 

5.  Describe  the  stories  of  Uncle  Remus. 

6.  The  outlook  :  what  is  said  of  it  ? 


THE  END. 


AN    INTRODUCTION 

TO    THE    STUDY    OF 

AMERICAN     LITERATURE 

By  BRANDER  MATTHEWS 

Professor  of  Literature  in  Columbia  College 

Cloth,  i2mo,  256  pages        -        -        Price,  $1.00 


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Storer  and  Lindsay's 
Elementary  Manual  of  Chemistry 

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GEOLOGY 


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PHYSICAL    GEOGRAPHY 


Appletons'  Physical  Geography 

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Cornell's  Physical  Geography 

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Guyot's  Physical  Geography 

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Monteith's  New  Physical  Geography 

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Eggleston's  Series  : 
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STANDARD  TEXT-BOOKS  IN 

Physiology  and  Hygiene 


Kellogg's  First  Book  in  Physiology  and  Hygiene 

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PHYSICS 

Appletons*  School  Physics 

By  John  D.  Quackenbos,  A.M.,  M.D.,  Alfred  M. 
Mayer,  Ph.D.,  Silas  W.  Holman,  S.B.,  Francis 
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Steele's  Popular  Physics 

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An  exposition  of   the   fundamental   principles   of    Physics 

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Trowbridge's  New  Physics 

By  John  Trowbridge,  S.D.    Cloth,  l2mo.    387  pp.         $1.20 
A    thoroughly    modern   work,    intended    for   colleges   and 

advanced  preparatory  schools. 

Hammel's  Observation  Blanks  in  Physics 

By  William  C.  A.  Hammel.    Flexible,  4to.    42  pp. 
Illustrated 30  cents 

A  guide  and  note  book  for  laboratory  practice,  designed  for 
beginners  in  the  study  or  to  accompany  any  text-book. 


Copies  of  any  of  the  above  books  will  be  sent  prepaid  to  any 
address,  on  receipt  of  the  price,  by  the  Publishers  : 

American  Book  Company 

New  York  ♦  Cincinnati  ♦  Chicago 

(S.  5> 


Text-Books    in    Astronomy 


Bowen's  Astronomy  by  Observation 

By  Eliza  A.  Bowen.  Boards,  Quarto.  Colored 
Maps  and  Illustrations.  94  pag-es  .  .  .  $1.00 
An  elementary  text-book  for  schools,  and  especially  adapted 
for  use  as  an  atlas  to  accompany  any  other  text-book  in  astron- 
omy. Careful  directions  are  given  when,  how  and  where  to 
find  the  heavenly  bodies,  and  the  quarto  pages  admit  star  maps 
and  views  on  a  large  scale. 

Gillet  and  Rolfe's  Astronomies 

By  J.  A.  Gillet  and  W.  J.  Rolfe. 

First  Book  in  Astronomy.     220  pages  .        .        $1.00 
V      Astronomy.     415  pages 1.40 

Lockyer's  Astronomies 

By  J.  N.  Lockyer,  F.R.S. 

Astronomy.    (Science  Primer  Series.)    136  pages,  35  cents 

Elementary  Lessons  in  Astronomy.    312  pp.        $1.22 

Ray's  New  Elements  of  Astronomy 

By  Selim    H.   Peabody,  Ph.D.,  LL.D.      Cloth, 

i2mo.     352  pages        ......  1.20 

Steele's  New  Descriptive  Astronomy 

By  J.  Dorman  Steele,  Ph.D.  Cloth,  T2mo.  338  pp.  1. 00 

This  book  is  written  in  the  same  interesting  and  inspiring 

manner  as  the  other  books  of  the  Steele  Series.     It  conforms 

to  the  latest  discoveries  and  approved  theories  of  the  science. 

It  supplies  an  adequate  course  for  all  secondary  schools  and 

college  preparatory  classes. 


Copies  of  any  of  the  above  books  will  be  sent  prepaid  to  any 
address^  on  receipt  of  the  price ^  by  the  Publishers  : 

American  Book  Company 

New  York  ♦  Cincinnati  ♦  Chicago 

(S  1) 


YA  04448 


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THE  UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA  LIBRARY 


